Incident Post-Mortem Template

Prompt

Write a blameless post-mortem for a technical incident at [COMPANY NAME].

Incident details:
- Incident title: [DESCRIPTIVE TITLE]
- Severity: [P0 / P1 / P2]
- Date and time: [WHEN IT STARTED]
- Duration: [HOW LONG IT LASTED]
- Systems affected: [LIST]
- User impact: [NUMBER AFFECTED AND HOW]
- Revenue or SLA impact: [IF APPLICABLE]
- Incident commander: [NAME]
- Contributing engineers: [NAMES OR ROLES]

Timeline of events: [PASTE TIMELINE OR DESCRIBE SEQUENCE]

Root cause (preliminary): [WHAT CAUSED IT]

Write the post-mortem:

1. **Executive Summary** — 3 sentences: what happened, impact, and current status.

2. **Impact** — Detailed user and business impact. Quantify where possible.

3. **Timeline** — Precise chronological sequence: detection, escalation, investigation, mitigation, resolution, and all-clear.

4. **Root Cause Analysis** — The technical root cause AND any process/system factors that allowed it to happen or made it worse.

5. **Contributing Factors** — Conditions that set the stage (monitoring gap, insufficient testing, process drift, etc.).

6. **What Went Well** — Honest, specific acknowledgment of effective response actions.

7. **What Went Poorly** — Where did the response break down? Be specific.

8. **Action Items** — Each with: description, owner, due date, and priority. No vague "improve monitoring."

Tone: blameless. Systems thinking, not scapegoating.