Postmortem

When NOT to use: Incident still ongoing (focus on resolution first), looking to assign blame (antithesis of blameless culture), or issue is trivial with no learning value.

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track your progress:

Postmortem Progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Assemble timeline and quantify impact
- [ ] Step 2: Conduct root cause analysis
- [ ] Step 3: Define corrective and preventive actions
- [ ] Step 4: Document and share postmortem
- [ ] Step 5: Track action items to completion

Step 1: Assemble timeline and quantify impact

Gather facts: when detected, when started, key events, when resolved. Quantify impact: users affected, duration, revenue/SLA impact, customer complaints. For straightforward incidents use resources/template.md. For complex incidents with multiple causes or cascading failures, study resources/methodology.md for advanced timeline reconstruction techniques.