Which TWO of the following are BEST described as traditional escalation paths?

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Traditional IT escalation paths—before modern SRE practices—were generally based on hierarchical or functional structures. The SRE Workbook explains that SRE aims to “replace rigid hierarchical escalation paths with structured incident roles and clear authority during incidents.” (SRE Workbook – Incident Management). These older models include:

Hierarchical escalation: issues are escalated to higher managerial or senior technical tiers.

Functional escalation: issues are escalated across functional lines depending on expertise (network team, DBAs, sysadmins, etc.).

Both models are referenced throughout reliability engineering literature as “traditional escalation paths,” which SRE incident management explicitly avoids by instead using role-based escalation (IC, Communications Lead, Ops Lead, etc.).

Options 3 and 4 (Cyclical and Logical) are not recognized escalation patterns in ITSM or SRE literature.

Thus, the answer is A (1 and 2).