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Incident post-mortem template
A blameless write-up of an incident: timeline, impact, root cause and actions that stop a repeat.
Post-mortem: invoice emails delayed
Summary
Impact
Timeline
Root cause
What went well
What didn't
Actions
What it is
A post-mortem is a write-up after an incident: what happened, how bad it was, a minute-by-minute timeline, the root cause and the actions that stop it happening again. Blameless means you look at how the system allowed the mistake, because people make mistakes and systems should catch them. Every action gets an owner and a date.
When to use it
- After an outage or a serious bug in production
- After a missed deadline or a failed launch
- Any incident customers noticed
How to use it
- 01
Build the timeline first
Write times and events while memory is fresh. Facts first, explanations later.
- 02
Find the root cause
Ask why until you reach something the team can change. Write it as a short paragraph.
- 03
Review together
Share with comment access and walk through it in a 30-minute meeting. Resolve comments as you go.
- 04
Track the actions
Each action is a to-do with a name and date. Link it from the sprint board with @.
Or have the AI draft your version
"Write a blameless post-mortem for a webshop that charged 200 customers twice during a payment provider timeout, with summary, impact, timeline, root cause and actions."
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