Postmortem Template
Type: PostmortemCreated: Team: Platform
published
Summary
2–3 sentences in plain language: what happened, the impact, and how it was resolved.
Timeline
Time-ordered events in UTC.
| Time (UTC) | Event |
|---|---|
| HH:MM | Alert fired |
| HH:MM | On-call acknowledged |
| HH:MM | Root cause identified |
| HH:MM | Fix deployed |
| HH:MM | Service restored |
Impact
- Users affected: …
- Duration: …
- Data loss: yes/no, scope
- Revenue or trust impact: …
Root cause
What actually caused it. Be specific — "X broke because Y", not "human error".
Contributing factors
What conditions made this more likely or harder to detect?
What went well
Things that worked — fast detection, good comms, an effective fix.
What went poorly
What slowed detection or recovery. Focus on systems, not people.
Action items
Track each to completion — a postmortem without follow-through is theater.
| Action | Owner | Due | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| … | engineering | YYYY-MM-DD | open |