Postmortem Writing

Comprehensive guide to writing effective, blameless postmortems that drive organizational learning and prevent incident recurrence.

Do not use this skill when

• The task is unrelated to postmortem writing
• You need a different domain or tool outside this scope

Instructions

• Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
• Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
• Provide actionable steps and verification.
• If detailed examples are required, open resources/implementation-playbook.md.

Use this skill when

• Conducting post-incident reviews
• Writing postmortem documents
• Facilitating blameless postmortem meetings
• Identifying root causes and contributing factors
• Creating actionable follow-up items
• Building organizational learning culture

Core Concepts

🧠 Knowledge Modules (Fractal Skills)

1. 1. Blameless Culture

2. 2. Postmortem Triggers

3. Postmortem Timeline

4. Template 1: Standard Postmortem

5. What Happened

6. Why It Happened

7. System Diagram

8. What Worked

9. What Didn't Work

10. Detection Gap

11. What Worked

12. What Could Be Improved

13. Customer Impact

14. Business Impact

15. Technical Impact

16. What Went Well

17. What Went Wrong

18. Where We Got Lucky

19. Supporting Data

20. Related Incidents

21. References

22. Template 2: 5 Whys Analysis

23. Why #1: Why did the service fail?

24. Why #2: Why were database connections exhausted?

25. Why #3: Why did the code bypass the connection pool?

26. Why #4: Why wasn't this caught in code review?

27. Why #5: Why isn't there a safety net for this type of change?

28. Template 3: Quick Postmortem (Minor Incidents)

29. Running a Postmortem Meeting

30. 1. Opening (5 min)

31. 2. Timeline Review (15 min)

32. 3. Analysis Discussion (20 min)

33. 4. Action Items (15 min)

34. 5. Closing (5 min)

35. Do's

36. Don'ts