Effective Postmortems

Writing an effective postmortem allows us to learn quickly from our mistakes and improve our systems and processes for everyone. We want to be sure we're writing detailed and accurate postmortems in order to get the most benefit out of them. This guide lists some of the things we can do to make sure our postmortems are effective.

Dos#

Don'ts#

Suggestions#

Reviewing#

We have a Slack room dedicated to reviewing postmortems before the scheduled meeting. Here are some of the things we're looking for:

Reviewing a postmortem isn't about nit-picking typos (although we should make sure our external message isn't littered with spelling errors). It's about providing constructive feedback on valuable changes to a postmortem so that we get the most benefit from them.

Examples#

Here are some examples of postmortems from other companies as a reference,

Useful Resources#