Incident Post-Mortem Template
A structured framework for teams to objectively analyze system outages, critical bugs, or service disruptions while capturing valuable learnings and preventing future recurrences.
What Is an Incident Post-Mortem?
An Incident Post-Mortem is a structured, blameless review conducted after a significant incident (like a system outage, major bug, or service disruption) has been resolved. Unlike casual debriefs, this template guides your team through a methodical analysis of what happened, what was learned, and what concrete actions will prevent similar issues in the future.
The framework promotes a culture of continuous improvement by focusing on systems and processes rather than individual mistakes. This approach acknowledges that incidents often result from multiple contributing factors rather than a single point of failure.
Benefits & When to Use
Use this template when:
- After resolving a production incident or system outage
- Following a significant customer-impacting event
- When a critical bug made it to production
- After a major deployment failure
- When security vulnerabilities have been discovered and patched
Key benefits:
- Transforms stressful incidents into valuable learning opportunities
- Creates a shared understanding of complex system failures
- Identifies systemic issues rather than assigning blame
- Builds institutional knowledge about your systems
- Prevents recurring incidents through actionable improvements
- Strengthens team resilience and incident response capabilities
How to Run an Incident Post-Mortem Session
Time needed: 45-90 minutes, depending on incident complexity and team size
Preparation (Before the Session)
- Complete the "What Happened" section with factual information about the incident, including timeline, impact, and initial response details.
- Remind participants this is a blameless review focused on improvement, not fault-finding.
During the Session
Set the tone (5 min) - Begin by establishing psychological safety. Read the Retrospective Prime Directive: "Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."
Review the facts (10 min) - Walk through the pre-filled information about what happened, ensuring everyone has a shared understanding of the incident timeline and impact.
Individual reflection (10 min) - Have participants add their thoughts to each of the four sections:
- What went well - Positive responses, adaptations, and effective mitigations
- Lessons Learned - Key insights and realizations from the experience
- Future Considerations - Ideas to prevent recurrence
- What is an ongoing problem - Issues that still need addressing
Group discussion (15-30 min) - Review each section as a team, allowing participants to explain their contributions and asking clarifying questions.
Theme identification (5-10 min) - Group similar items together and label these themes.
Prioritization (5 min) - Use voting to identify the most critical lessons and considerations.
Action planning (10-15 min) - Create specific, assignable actions in the Actions section, focusing on preventing future incidents and addressing ongoing problems.
Wrap-up (5 min) - Summarize key takeaways and next steps, ensuring actions have clear owners and deadlines.
Tips for a Successful Post-Mortem
Focus on systems, not people - Frame discussions around processes, tooling, and system design rather than individual actions.
Use objective language - Stick to observable facts rather than assumptions or accusations.
Set clear time boundaries - Prevent the session from becoming an extended blame game by maintaining focus on learning and improvement.
Involve the right people - Include those who responded to the incident alongside those who can implement system changes.
Document thoroughly - Capture detailed notes about learnings and actions for future reference and knowledge sharing.
Follow up on actions - Schedule a check-in to ensure post-mortem actions are being implemented.
Use the voting feature strategically - It helps identify the most significant areas for improvement when you have limited capacity to make changes.
Customize the template - Add or remove sections as needed to match your team's specific incident review needs.
Highlight participant contributions - Click on a participant's icon in the toolbar to highlight their contributions during the discussion phase.
Remember that the ultimate goal isn't just to understand what went wrong, but to build more resilient systems and stronger response capabilities for the future.
