Incident Postmortem Checklist
Make a blameless incident postmortem checklist: preserve the evidence, build the timeline, find causes, hold the review and track actions to done.
- Free
- No sign-up to try
- Works as you type
5 stages, 20 steps
1. Right after the incident
- Confirm the incident is resolved and systems are stable
- Name an owner for the postmortem
- Save logs, chat history and dashboards before they expire
- Schedule the review meeting within a few working days
2. Timeline and impact
- Build a timeline from the first sign to full recovery, with times
- Record who and what was affected, and for how long
- Note how the incident was detected and how long that took
- Note each decision made during the response and why
3. Causes
- Keep it blameless: describe systems and decisions, not faults in people
- Keep asking why until you reach causes you can change
- Look for contributing factors: process, tooling, alerts, documentation
- Note what went well and should be kept
4. Review meeting
- Share the draft before the meeting
- Walk through the timeline with the people who responded
- Agree actions, each with an owner and a due date
- Rank the actions by how much they reduce the chance of a repeat
5. Follow-up
- Publish the postmortem to the wider team
- Track the actions to completion
- Tell affected customers what happened and what you're changing
- Check related past postmortems for repeat causes
Free, no sign-up to try. Your checklist becomes a Room you can edit, publish and share.
How it works
How the Incident Postmortem Checklist works
- 1
Pick the stages
Keep the stages you need and name an owner for each.
- 2
Add your own steps
Add steps specific to your team or product.
- 3
Share the checklist
Create a Room everyone ticks off together from one link.
Worked example
What it makes
1. Right after the incident
Preserve the evidence and set a date.
- Confirm the incident is resolved and systems are stable
- Name an owner for the postmortem
- Save logs, chat history and dashboards before they expire
- Schedule the review meeting within a few working days
2. Timeline and impact
An agreed account of what happened and who it affected.
- Build a timeline from the first sign to full recovery, with times
- Record who and what was affected, and for how long
- Note how the incident was detected and how long that took
- Note each decision made during the response and why
3. Causes
Find what allowed it to happen, not who to blame.
- Keep it blameless: describe systems and decisions, not faults in people
- Keep asking why until you reach causes you can change
- Look for contributing factors: process, tooling, alerts, documentation
- Note what went well and should be kept
4. Review meeting
The people involved agree the story and the actions.
- Share the draft before the meeting
- Walk through the timeline with the people who responded
- Agree actions, each with an owner and a due date
- Rank the actions by how much they reduce the chance of a repeat
5. Follow-up
Actions get done and the lessons spread.
- Publish the postmortem to the wider team
- Track the actions to completion
- Tell affected customers what happened and what you're changing
- Check related past postmortems for repeat causes
Who it's for
Who uses it
Engineering teams
Run every postmortem the same, blameless way.
Incident commanders
Hand the follow-up to a named owner.
Operations teams
Learn from outages and service failures, not just software ones.
Good to know
What to consider
- This is a checklist for running the postmortem process; write the report in your usual document.
- Keep it blameless, or people stop telling you what really happened.
Questions
About the Incident Postmortem Checklist
Does it produce the postmortem report?
No. It's the step-by-step process from the end of the incident to closed actions. Write the report itself in your usual document and link it.
Where do the steps come from?
From a step library written and reviewed by people, not generated per visitor. Pick the stages you need, name an owner for each and add your own steps.
Make your checklist now
Free, no sign-up to try. It becomes a Room you can edit, publish and share.
Create my checklistRelated
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