LEARNING FROM INCIDENTS WITHOUT BLAME
Incidents are inevitable. Repeating them isn’t.
The problem with most postmortems? They turn into blame sessions, so people stop being honest. Good postmortems ask “what failed?” not “who failed?” – and end with concrete fixes, not vague promises.
The scenario:
You need a postmortem template that drives real improvement without creating a blame culture.
The prompt:
You’re creating an incident postmortem template.
Build a template that captures:
– Timeline: What happened and when (facts only)
– Detection: How we found out, and how long it took
– Response: What we did, what worked, what didn’t
– Root cause: The system/process failure (not individual blame)
– Impact: Client effect, SLA implications, reputation risk
– Action items: Specific fixes with owners and deadlines
– Lessons: What we’ll do differently next time
Include guidance notes for facilitating a blame-free review.