Incidents happen — services go down, deployments fail, databases lock up. No matter how experienced your team is or how polished your stack looks, failure is part of software. But what separates resilient teams from reactive ones is what happens after the dust settles.
A post-incident review (PIR) — sometimes called a postmortem — is more than a meeting or document. It’s a practice. A way of turning failure into insight, confusion into clarity, and fear into trust. When done right, it can transform a painful moment into one of your most valuable learning opportunities.
Here’s how to run post-incident reviews that actually lead to growth — not just finger-pointing.
What Is a Post-Incident Review? đź“‹
PIR is a structured review that takes place after an outage, failure, or unexpected behavior in production. It typically covers:
- What happened (timeline of events)
- Why it happened (root cause analysis)
- What went well (detection, communication, recovery)
- What didn’t (response time, tooling, escalation paths)
- What we’ll do to improve (action items)
The goal? Learn and improve. Not assign blame.
Example: A Classic Failure, Two Different Outcomes
Let’s say a developer pushes a change that unexpectedly disables login for all EU users. The fix takes an hour. Here’s how two very different post-incident reviews might look:
đź”´ Blame-Oriented PIR:
- “Who made the commit?”
- “Why didn’t you test this more carefully?”
- “You should’ve followed the checklist.”
Results: Fear, silence, and shallow fixes — likely just reverting the code without understanding the context.
🟢 Learning-Oriented PIR:
- “What systems failed to catch this before production?”
- “What feedback loops were missing?”
- “How could we prevent this class of issue in the future?”
Results: A broader conversation about CI coverage, feature flag safety, and developer autonomy. Stronger systems, not just corrections.
Keys to a Healthy Post-Incident Review âś…
1. Create a Blameless Environment
Make it clear: the goal is to fix systems, not people. Mistakes are inevitable — the real failure is not learning from them. Frame questions as:
- “What conditions allowed this?”
- “What assumptions turned out to be wrong?”
- “Where did our detection or escalation fall short?”
2. Start with a Clear Timeline
Reconstruct what happened minute-by-minute:
- When did the issue begin?
- Who noticed it?
- What alerts (if any) triggered?
- What actions were taken?
This helps remove hindsight bias and build a shared view of the incident.
3. Focus on Systemic Causes
Rarely is the root cause just “human error.” Dig deeper:
- Was the deploy process confusing?
- Were tests missing or brittle?
- Did alerting fail to trigger?
- Was documentation unclear?
4. Capture What Went Well
Every incident contains lessons about what’s working, too:
- Fast detection?
- Great team communication?
- Clear rollback procedure?
These are wins worth repeating and reinforcing.
5. Document It — and Share It
Write a summary that includes:
- Timeline
- Impact
- Contributing factors
- Action items
- Ownership and deadlines
Store PIRs somewhere searchable (e.g. Notion, GitHub wiki, Confluence). Over time, this becomes an invaluable knowledge base for avoiding regressions.
6. Turn Actions into Habits
Ensure that:
- Action items are tracked and owned
- Bigger themes (like “we need better test coverage”) are added to roadmap discussions
- Learnings are shared across teams, not siloed
Post-Incident Reviews Are Culture Builders 🏗️
A PIR isn’t just an engineering process — it’s a cultural signal. A well-run review says:
- We take ownership without blame
- We value transparency over ego
- We’re here to learn, not to punish
- We expect things to break — and we’re ready to improve each time they do
When you normalize the practice of reflection, your team becomes more confident, more cohesive, and more resilient.
