Obsessed with Solving the Context Switching Problem

We all have that list. The one with small, important tasks that we know we need to handle. Fix the leaky faucet. Change the smoke detector battery. Organize the garage. We know these things need to get done, but we put them off.

Why? It’s more than just the hassle of the process. It's the cost of interruption. For an engineer focused on a critical project, every context switch is expensive. Even if a small task only takes an hour, you're paying a tax on both ends—the mental effort to switch to the new issue, solve it, and then the even harder task of getting your head back into the important work you left behind.

This "knowing-doing gap" exists in the cloud, and it's far more costly. Every day, engineers are flooded with alerts and recommendations flagging vulnerabilities or cost-saving opportunities. They know these issues should be addressed.

But turning that knowledge into action means interrupting deep work to create tickets, document the problem, and track it through a backlog. The cost of that context switch often feels greater than the benefit of fixing the small issue, so it gets pushed to "later." Opportunities to save money and reduce risk are left on the table, not for lack of knowledge, but because of the high cost of interruption.

This is a problem we've been obsessed with solving for our customers. How do we close that gap?

Mind The Knowing-Doing Gap

We all have that mental to-do list. It’s filled with small, nagging tasks we know we need to handle. Fix that leaky faucet under the sink. Change the battery in the smoke detector that chirps every morning at 3 AM. Organize the garage.

We see the problem, acknowledge it, and then... add it to the list for "later."

Why do we delay? It’s not just about the hassle. It's about the high cost of interruption. This is what I call the "knowing-doing gap," and it’s one of the biggest—and most expensive—challenges businesses face in managing their cloud environments.

The High Cost of Context Switching

For engineers, developers, and anyone responsible for building and maintaining complex systems, focus is currency. Every time they are pulled away from a core project to address a seemingly small issue, they pay a heavy tax. It’s not just the time it takes to fix the problem, it’s the mental overhead required to switch contexts, address the issue, and then attempt to dive back into the complex work they were doing before.

This is why the to-do list in cloud operations grows so long. Modern observability and security tools generate a constant stream of valuable recommendations. They tell you when a resource is over-provisioned or a security group needs tightening. The problem isn't a lack of information—it's that every single alert represents a potential interruption.

Even when a critical recommendation is identified, the path to resolution is filled with friction that forces a context switch:

1. Receive the alert (the first interruption).
2. Create a ticket in a system like Jira or ServiceNow.
3. Manually copy and paste all the relevant details.
4. Assign the ticket to the appropriate team.
5. Wait for it to be prioritized against a long backlog of other tasks, each representing its own context switch.

This process is fundamentally at odds with the deep, focused work required to innovate. As a result, valuable recommendations—opportunities to enhance security, cut costs, and improve performance—are often left unresolved for weeks. The knowing-doing gap widens, not just because of process friction, but because the cost of constant interruption is too high.

Closing the Gap with a Single Click

At Mission, our Technical Account Managers (TAMs) have always focused on cutting through the noise to deliver curated, high-impact recommendations. But we realized that even with the best insights, the friction and interruption cost of implementation was still a major roadblock.

That’s why we built Resolve with Mission, a new feature in our Mission Control platform.

We wanted to create an "easy button" that closes the knowing-doing gap for good by minimizing the context switch. Now, when a customer receives an eligible recommendation from their TAM, they don’t just see another task for the backlog; they see a solution. With a single click, they can convert that recommendation directly into a support request, using the services already included in their plan.

The system automatically creates a support case with all the necessary context and routes it to our cloud operations team. The customer’s engineers are never pulled from their primary tasks. They can track the status from start to finish, right from their Mission Control dashboard, without losing focus.

We built this to fundamentally change the dynamic of cloud management. We want to move our customers from a state of passive awareness to one of continuous, proactive optimization—all while protecting their most valuable resource: their engineers' time and focus.