Once an incident event has been successfully resolved, it is generally a good idea, depending on the severity and impact of the incident, to conduct and publish a formal Post Mortem analysis, including any corrective actions that need to be taken to prevent a recurrence. A Post Mortem analysis can allow your team to understand what led up to the incident occurring, and can provide your customers and stakeholders confidence that you are putting in place procedures and systems to prevent it from happening again.
A Post Mortem analysis can be created by navigating to any incident event detail page at Admin > Events > Incident List > Info icon > Create/edit post mortem icon. From here, the Post Mortem can be authored in markdown format according to your organization's internal processes. Once the Post Mortem is finalized, enable the Publish toggle button to make it visible on the status dashboard.
Post Mortem Template
A standard Post Mortem template can be created as the starting point for all post mortems by navigating to Admin > Events > Post Mortem.
A sample Post Mortem template, in markdown format, is provided below. This template leverages the "five whys" format. With this format, you team can develop a timeline and sequence of events that caused the incident by continuing to ask why until you arrive at the root cause. You can then develop a corrective action plan that addresses the whys to prevent a recurrence.
**Incident Summary** [INSERT SUMMARY] **Root Cause Summary** 1. [Why #1] 2. [Why #2] 3. [Why #3] 4. [Why #5] 5. [Why #5] **Corrective Actions** | STATUS|ACTION | | --- | --- | | [IN PROGRESS or COMPLETE] | [INSERT ACTION DETAIL] | | [IN PROGRESS or COMPLETE] | [INSERT ACTION DETAIL] | | [IN PROGRESS or COMPLETE] | [INSERT ACTION DETAIL] |