Ha. It's a role/title for the lifetime of the incident -- it's useful to have someone to keep things moving, keep track of workstreams, and to know who the decision-maker is, especially for bigger incidents. I'm just a SWE who works on infrastructure.

It's actually a standard term for the person who plays this role during incident response https://www.pagerduty.com/resources/incident-management-resp...

Note: Incident Command is almost certain an allusion (or implementation) of the Incident Command System [1]

It is a common system in all kinds of emergency response scenarios, including local emergency services (fire/police/ambulance) and it scales all the way to massive disasters.

It is especially useful to clarify command structures when multiple response entities need to coordinate. That is true even within organizations like public companies, where the reporting structures may be distinct.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_Command_System

It’s a standard term for a role during an incident.