Postmortem Template
Use this template for Sev0 and Sev1 incidents. Schedule the postmortem within 48 hours of resolution.
[Incident Title]
Date: YYYY-MM-DD Severity: Sev[0-3] Duration: HH:MM - HH:MM (X hours Y minutes) Author: [Name] Status: Draft | Reviewed | Complete
Summary
[1-2 sentence description of what happened and the user impact.]
Timeline (UTC)
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| HH:MM | Alert fired / Issue reported |
| HH:MM | Incident acknowledged by [name] |
| HH:MM | Root cause identified |
| HH:MM | Fix deployed |
| HH:MM | Service restored and verified |
| HH:MM | Monitoring confirmed stable |
Impact
- Users affected: [number or percentage]
- Requests failed: [number]
- Features impacted: [list]
- Data loss: [none / describe]
Root Cause
[Detailed technical explanation of what caused the incident.]
5 Whys Analysis
- Why did [symptom]?
- Because [cause 1]
- Why did [cause 1]?
- Because [cause 2]
- Why did [cause 2]?
- Because [cause 3]
- Why did [cause 3]?
- Because [cause 4]
- Why did [cause 4]?
- Because [root cause]
What Went Well
- [Thing that worked]
- [Thing that worked]
What Went Wrong
- [Thing that didn't work]
- [Thing that didn't work]
Action Items
| Action | Owner | Priority | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Action item] | [Name] | P1 | #XXX |
| [Action item] | [Name] | P2 | #XXX |
Lessons Learned
[Key takeaways that should inform future engineering decisions.]