Streamlined Incident Post‑Mortems: A Concise Template + AI prompts for artefacts

When something goes wrong in your application – a spike in latency, a partial outage, a security hiccup – the natural instinct is to fix it as quickly as possible and get back to work.  Equally important, though often overlooked, is what comes next: documenting what happened and capturing the lessons so it doesn’t happen again.

That’s the role of the incident post‑mortem (or retrospective), a structured report that walks through the timeline, identifies contributing factors, analyses the root cause and lists follow‑up actions.

Many teams know they should write post‑mortems but struggle to do so consistently.  Classic post‑mortem documents can be long and cumbersome.  They require collecting logs, reconstructing timelines, writing internal and customer updates, and making sure everyone’s voice is heard, all while trying not to assign blame.  When you’re juggling on‑call rotations, feature work and bug fixes, it’s easy to let a detailed post‑mortem slip.

Why a concise template matters

The longer you wait to document an incident, the more details fade from memory.  A concise, well‑organised template reduces the friction of writing a post‑mortem so you can capture context while it’s fresh.  It keeps all the essential pieces – what happened, why it happened, how it was resolved, and what you’re doing about it – without burying readers in unnecessary verbosity.

A streamlined post‑mortem template also helps teams maintain a blameless culture.  By focusing on systems and processes rather than finger‑pointing, you create a safe space to discuss mistakes openly.  Honest, factual documentation of the timeline and contributing factors encourages continuous improvement and prevents repeat incidents.

Introducing the Concise Incident Retrospective Template

Our Concise Incident Retrospective Template distills the post‑mortem down to its most critical components.  It’s designed for ease of use and clarity, with interactive sections you can fill out in Notion or your tool of choice.

Here’s what’s inside:

• Summary & Impact: A short, two‑to‑three sentence overview covering when the incident happened, what went wrong, how severe it was and who or what was affected.
• Key Details: A quick‑reference table for severity level, affected services, start and end times, total duration, participants and any useful links (dashboards, commits, status‑page entries).
• Timeline & Response: A simple table where you log the timeline in UTC – from the first signs of trouble to detection, escalations, actions taken and resolution.
• Contributing Factors & Mitigations: A combined section for jotting down the conditions that allowed the incident to occur and anything that prevented it from being worse.
• Resolution & Technical Analysis: Summarise how the issue was fixed and record any technical insights, like database queries, configuration settings or dependency issues.
• Lessons & Risks: Capture what went well, what didn’t and any new risks or patterns you uncovered.
• Follow‑up Actions: A lightweight checklist to assign corrective tasks with owners and due dates.
• Communication: Prompts you to prepare both an internal summary and an external customer statement, ensuring consistent and transparent communication.

Each section is intentionally succinct, with clear headings and prompts so you know exactly what to fill in. There’s no need for guesswork or writing from scratch; the structure guides you through the incident step by step.

Built‑in prompts for instant communications

A common complaint is that, even when the post‑mortem is written, drafting the emails and status updates takes more time. To solve that, the template includes two ready‑to‑use prompts:

1. Internal Summary Email Prompt: This prompt turns the completed post‑mortem into a brief, three‑to‑four paragraph email that explains what happened, outlines the impact, summarises the response and highlights the key action items. It’s perfect for sending to your engineering and product teams.
2. Stakeholder Communication Prompt: This prompt helps you craft a clear, customer‑friendly announcement for your status page or email newsletter. It states the issue and timeline in plain language, acknowledges the impact, describes how you resolved it, and reassures customers about the steps you’re taking to prevent a recurrence.

With these prompts, you can go from an incident to well‑crafted communication in minutes, without worrying about tone or structure.

A real‑world example to guide you

To make onboarding even easier, the template comes with a filled‑in example based on a real latency spike.  It shows how to document the timeline, capture root causes and outline follow‑up tasks.  It also demonstrates how the prompts generate the internal summary and customer update.  Seeing a completed template helps you understand the level of detail needed and how to adapt it to your own incidents.

How to use the template

1. Duplicate or download the template: it's available through Notion so you can duplicate it with a click or download it to use in your preferred tool.
2. Capture the basics: As soon as the incident is over, open the template and fill in the summary, key details and timeline using data from your monitoring tools, chat logs and incident management system.
3. Analyse: Work with the incident responders to identify contributing factors, what mitigated the impact, how you fixed it and any technical nuances.
4. Reflect: Ask what went well and what didn’t. Look for patterns or gaps in your processes.
5. Assign actions: Add follow‑up tasks with owners and due dates so improvements don’t fall through the cracks.
6. Communicate: Run the included prompts to create your internal and external updates. Review them for accuracy, then share with your team and customers.

By following these steps, you’ll produce a concise, high‑quality post‑mortem that turns a frustrating incident into a valuable learning opportunity.

Ready to simplify your post‑mortems?

Incidents are inevitable, but repeating the same mistakes isn’t.  A well‑structured, easy‑to‑use post‑mortem template helps you learn faster, improve reliability and communicate more effectively.  Download the Condensed Incident Retrospective Template today and see how painless post‑mortems can be.

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