The postmortem template that stuck
Most postmortem templates get filled in once and then abandoned. The one that stayed had specific properties worth naming.
I've seen many postmortem templates. Most get used once, filed away, and then reinvented three months later by the next incident owner. One template stayed in circulation for years. Its properties are worth naming.
Written June 2026 from cross-team experience.
The properties
- Short enough to actually complete. Two pages, tops. Anything longer gets skipped or half-filled.
- Focused on the questions people want answered. Not "what happened" but "what should we do differently".
- Explicit about severity, without being punitive. A P1 incident has a template section that doesn't apply to a P4.
- Blameless by structure, not just by aspiration. The template asks "what conditions made this possible" rather than "who did what wrong". This changes the tone of the writing.
- Action items that are assigned, dated, and tracked. Not "we should consider improving X"; an owner and a date.
The sections
- Summary (three sentences, top of page).
- Timeline (who saw what when).
- Impact (customers affected, revenue impact, duration).
- Contributing factors (not causes; factors that made the failure possible).
- What went well (the incident response, not the incident itself).
- Action items (with owners and dates).
The follow-through discipline
The template alone doesn't produce learning. The follow-through does. Every action item is tracked in the same place as regular work. Progress is reported monthly. Incidents where action items from previous incidents would have prevented them are noted.
Postmortems are worth doing when the loop from writing to action to prevention is closed. Otherwise they're documentation exercises.