Tilbaketeer

Tilbaketeer is a neologism used in Nordic tech communities to describe a disciplined process for returning a system to a prior, known-good state after an incident or deployment. The concept encompasses incident response, change management, and disaster recovery practices, emphasizing rapid restoration, data integrity, and minimal service disruption. Typical activities include identifying a rollback point, restoring backups or previous configurations, redeploying services, and performing post-incident validation and communication.

Etymology and usage context: the term combines the Norwegian word tilbake, meaning back, with a suffix reminiscent of English engineering terms, reflecting its origins in informal online discussions among developers and IT professionals in the region. While not an official standard, tilbaketeer has gained traction as a concise way to describe a structured rollback approach within teams that rely on backup strategies, version control, infrastructure as code, and runbooks.

Practices and scope: tilbaketeer emphasizes predefined rollback points, automated or scripted reversions, and rapid verification of system health and data integrity. It integrates with existing disciplines such as incident management, disaster recovery planning, and feature toggling, serving as a complement to continuous deployment rather than a replacement for them. Limitations include potential data loss on certain rollback points and the complexity of reversing multi-service changes; successful use depends on robust backups, clear criteria for rollback, and thorough post-incident reviews to improve future responses.