nandanosql Purpose
Run blameless, thorough postmortems that reconstruct timelines, identify root causes, and produce corrective actions — turning incidents into organizational learning instead of blame games.
Application
Postmortem Template
# Incident Postmortem: [Incident Title]
**Date of Incident:** [Date]
**Duration:** [Start → End, total duration]
**Severity:** [P0 / P1 / P2]
**Impact:** [Users affected, revenue impact, SLA breach]
**Author:** [Name]
**Postmortem Date:** [Date]
---
## 1. Summary
[2-3 sentences: what happened, what was impacted, how it was resolved]
## 2. Timeline
| Time (UTC) | Event |
|-----------|-------|
| [HH:MM] | [First signal / alert fired] |
| [HH:MM] | [Investigation started] |
| [HH:MM] | [Root cause identified] |
| [HH:MM] | [Fix deployed] |
| [HH:MM] | [Full recovery confirmed] |
## 3. Root Cause Analysis
### What Happened
[Technical description of what went wrong]
### Why It Happened (5 Whys)
1. **Why** did [symptom] occur? → Because [cause 1]
2. **Why** did [cause 1] happen? → Because [cause 2]
3. **Why** did [cause 2] happen? → Because [cause 3]
4. **Why** did [cause 3] happen? → Because [cause 4]
5. **Why** did [cause 4] happen? → Because [root cause]
**Root cause:** [The underlying systemic issue, not a person]
### Contributing Factors
- [Factor 1 — e.g., "No alerting on this metric"]
- [Factor 2 — e.g., "Deployment happened on Friday afternoon"]
## 4. What Went Well
- [Good thing 1 — e.g., "Detection was fast"]
- [Good thing 2 — e.g., "Team coordinated effectively"]
## 5. What Went Poorly
- [Bad thing 1 — e.g., "Took 2 hours to identify root cause"]
- [Bad thing 2 — e.g., "No runbook for this scenario"]
## 6. Action Items
| # | Action | Owner | Priority | Due Date | Status |
|---|--------|-------|----------|----------|--------|
| 1 | [Corrective action] | [Name] | [P0/P1] | [Date] | [Open] |
| 2 | [Preventive action] | [Name] | [P0/P1] | [Date] | [Open] |
| 3 | [Detection improvement] | [Name] | [P1/P2] | [Date] | [Open] |
## 7. Lessons Learned
- [Lesson 1 — systemic insight, not blame]
- [Lesson 2]
Blameless Culture Rules
| Rule | Implementation |
|---|---|
| No blame | Focus on systems, not individuals |
| Psychological safety | Everyone can speak freely without fear |
| Assume good intent | People made the best decision with info they had |
| Focus on prevention | "How do we make this impossible?" not "Who did this?" |
| Follow through | Action items must be tracked and completed |
Quality Rubric
| Dimension | 0 | 1 | 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blamelessness | Finger-pointing | Mostly blameless | Fully systemic analysis |
| Root Cause | Symptom identified | 2-3 Whys | Full 5 Whys to systemic root |
| Action Items | "Be more careful" | Specific actions | Actions + owners + due dates + tracking |
| Follow-through | Actions forgotten | Some tracked | All completed and verified |
References
Related Skills
skills/execution/retrospective-facilitator/SKILL.md— Regular reflectionskills/planning/risk-assessment/SKILL.md— Prevent future incidentsskills/planning/decision-log/SKILL.md— Log corrective decisions
External Frameworks
- Google SRE, Postmortem Culture — Blameless postmortems
- Toyota, 5 Whys — Root cause analysis
Skill type: Component Domain: Leadership & Career