SecondPen.aiTemplates · Incidents, problem-solving & learning
Blameless postmortem template
Origin: Google SRE book, "Postmortem Culture"; adopted by Atlassian, PagerDuty, and Etsy.
Sections
- Summary
- Impact
- Timeline
- Root causes & trigger
- Detection
- Response
- What went well / poorly / lucky
- Action items
How a tough reader scores it
When you score a draft against this format, the Critic evaluates this postmortem. The weights add up to 100; the fixes for the weakest criteria arrive as cards in the editor.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Impact is quantified | 15 |
| Timeline is precise and complete | 10 |
| Root cause analysis goes past the trigger to systemic causes | 25 |
| Blameless language throughout | 10 |
| Detection and response gaps honestly assessed, including luck | 10 |
| Action items are specific, owned, dated, and address root causes | 25 |
| Readable by an engineer outside the team | 5 |
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.
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