Postmortems Part 3: Getting the Most out of Your Postmortem Meetings

Effective postmortem meetings are crucial for deriving maximum value from incident analyses by fostering a deeper understanding of incident causes and securing buy-in for action items. The meetings emphasize a culture of blamelessness to avoid attributing fault to individuals and instead focus on systemic factors that led to the incident. At PagerDuty, postmortem meetings benefit from skilled facilitators who guide discussions, ensuring a productive environment where everyone feels comfortable contributing without fear of blame. Facilitators also play a key role in managing group dynamics, encouraging participation, and maintaining focus on achieving consensus on action plans. By involving team leaders in these discussions, the meetings serve as a platform to align on priorities and make informed decisions about technical investments and customer experience improvements.