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Create comprehensive post-incident reviews documenting what happened, root cause analysis, impact assessment, and action items to prevent recurrence.
# Write Post-Incident Review (Postmortem) Act as an Engineering Manager writing a post-incident review. ## Post-Incident Review Template ### Incident Summary - **Incident ID**: [ID] - **Date & Time**: [Start] - [End] - **Duration**: [Duration] - **Severity**: [SEV-1/2/3/4] - **Status**: [Resolved/Mitigated] ### Executive Summary [2-3 sentence summary of what happened and impact] ### Timeline of Events **Detection** ([Time]): - [What happened] - [How it was detected] - [Who was notified] **Investigation** ([Time]): - [What was investigated] - [Key findings] - [Decisions made] **Mitigation** ([Time]): - [Actions taken] - [Workarounds deployed] - [Resources involved] **Resolution** ([Time]): - [Root cause identified] - [Permanent fix deployed] - [Verification completed] --- ### Impact Assessment **User Impact**: - [ ] Affected users: [Number/%] - [ ] Affected regions: [List] - [ ] Affected features: [List] - [ ] User-visible errors: [Description] **Business Impact**: - [ ] Revenue impact: [$ or %] - [ ] Customer churn: [Number] - [ ] Support tickets: [Number] - [ ] Brand reputation: [Impact] **Technical Impact**: - [ ] Services affected: [List] - [ ] Error rate increase: [% or number] - [ ] Performance degradation: [%] - [ ] Data integrity: [Any issues] --- ### Root Cause Analysis **Primary Root Cause**: - [Detailed explanation] - [Why it happened] - [Contributing factors] **Contributing Factors**: - [ ] [Factor 1]: [Explanation] - [ ] [Factor 2]: [Explanation] - [ ] [Factor 3]: [Explanation] **Five Whys Analysis**: 1. Why did [symptom] happen? → [Answer] 2. Why did [answer 1] happen? → [Answer] 3. Why did [answer 2] happen? → [Answer] 4. Why did [answer 3] happen? → [Answer] 5. Why did [answer 4] happen? → [Root cause] --- ### What Went Well - [ ] [Positive aspect 1] - [ ] [Positive aspect 2] - [ ] [Positive aspect 3] ### What Went Wrong - [ ] [Problem 1] - [ ] [Problem 2] - [ ] [Problem 3] ### What We Learned - [ ] [Learning 1] - [ ] [Learning 2] - [ ] [Learning 3] --- ### Action Items **Immediate Actions** (This Week): - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] **Short-term Actions** (This Month): - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] **Long-term Actions** (This Quarter): - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] - [ ] [Action] - Owner: [Name] - Due: [Date] **Action Item Categories**: - Prevention: [Actions to prevent recurrence] - Detection: [Actions to improve detection] - Response: [Actions to improve response] - Recovery: [Actions to improve recovery] --- ### Metrics & Statistics **Incident Metrics**: - Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA): [Time] - Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR): [Time] - Time to Detection: [Time] - Time to Mitigation: [Time] - Time to Resolution: [Time] **Comparison to Goals**: - [ ] MTTA within target? [Yes/No] - [ ] MTTR within target? [Yes/No] - [ ] Communication timeline met? [Yes/No] --- ### Follow-up Actions **Review Schedule**: - [ ] Action item review: [Date] - [ ] Retrospective meeting: [Date] - [ ] Document update: [Date] **Stakeholder Communication**: - [ ] Executive summary shared: [Date] - [ ] Customer communication sent: [Date] - [ ] Status page updated: [Date] --- ## Post-Incident Review Best Practices **Blameless Culture**: - Focus on systems and processes, not individuals - Ask "What" and "How", not "Who" - Encourage learning and improvement **Thoroughness**: - Include all relevant details - Document lessons learned - Track action items to completion **Transparency**: - Share learnings across teams - Update documentation - Communicate changes to stakeholders
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