postmortem-writing

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

1. Blameless Culture

Blame-Focused	Blameless
"Who caused this?"	"What conditions allowed this?"
"Someone made a mistake"	"The system allowed this mistake"
Punish individuals	Improve systems
Hide information	Share learnings
Fear of speaking up	Psychological safety

2. Postmortem Triggers

• SEV1 or SEV2 incidents
• Customer-facing outages > 15 minutes
• Data loss or security incidents
• Near-misses that could have been severe
• Novel failure modes
• Incidents requiring unusual intervention

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