SecondPen.aiTemplates · Incidents, problem-solving & learning
After Action Review (AAR) template
Origin: U.S. Army, 1970s; widely adopted in business and emergency management.
Sections
- What was supposed to happen
- What actually happened
- Why there was a difference
- What to sustain / improve
How a tough reader scores it
When you score a draft against this format, the Critic evaluates this AAR. The weights add up to 100; the fixes for the weakest criteria arrive as cards in the editor.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Intended outcome is clearly stated | 15 |
| Actual events are factual and evidenced | 20 |
| Gap analysis finds real causes | 25 |
| Sustain items are specific, not just "good teamwork" | 10 |
| Improve items become owned commitments | 20 |
| Tone is learning-focused, not blame | 10 |
How it works in SecondPen.ai
Open the template and the editor writes the blank once, with a line of guidance under each heading that you delete as you fill it in. Write your abstract and the editor names the format it reads like. Ask for a document with a slash command and it offers to start from the matching format. When the draft is ready, the Critic scores it against the criteria above, the way this format's toughest reader would, and the three highest-leverage fixes become Editor cards.
More in Incidents, problem-solving & learning
- Blameless postmortemGoogle SRE book, "Postmortem Culture"; adopted by Atlassian, PagerDuty, and Etsy
- Amazon COE (Correction of Error)Amazon/AWS post-incident process, reviewed weekly by leadership
- A3 problem-solving reportToyota Production System; one A3-size sheet following PDCA
- Pre-mortemGary Klein, Harvard Business Review (2007); endorsed by Daniel Kahneman
- Team retrospectiveAgile / Scrum; formats include Start-Stop-Continue and the 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for)