Your incident report is 10 pages. Nobody reads it.
The incident happened. You wrote a thorough post-mortem. 10 pages of timeline, root cause analysis, and recommendations.
Nobody read it. Your team repeated the same mistake three months later. Length doesn’t equal thoroughness. A one-page report that gets read beats a 10-page report that collects dust.
The scenario:
You want to create a post-incident report template that’s short enough to read and actionable enough to prevent repeats.
The prompt:
You’re building a one-page incident report template.
Structure it in three sections:
What happened (timeline in 5 bullet points, max)
Why it happened (root cause, not blame)
What changes (specific actions, owners, deadlines)
Rules:
Total length: one page
No jargon the client wouldn’t understand
Every action item has a name and a date
Include a severity rating and business impact in one sentence
Create both an internal version and a client-facing version.