Introducing the PagerDuty Postmortem Guide

After resolving a major incident, conducting a postmortem is crucial for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and preventing future occurrences. A postmortem involves a detailed analysis of the factors leading to the incident, the response actions taken, and plans to avert similar events in the future. It includes a meeting to discuss findings and share learnings with the organization and stakeholders. Emphasizing a blameless approach, this process encourages open communication without fear of punishment, treating human error as a symptom of systemic issues rather than individual faults. The guide offers insights into overcoming cognitive biases that may cloud postmortem analysis and provides strategies for implementing effective postmortems. By prioritizing postmortem completion soon after an incident, organizations can ensure valuable lessons are learned and integrated into their systems, thus enhancing overall resilience and performance.