Postmortems vs. Retrospectives: When (and How) to Use Each Effectively

In a blog post by PagerDuty, the distinctions between postmortems and retrospectives are explored to enhance the effectiveness of both practices in continuous improvement. Postmortems focus on analyzing incidents after they occur to identify and implement improvements in incident response, involving a blame-free, root-cause analysis soon after incident resolution. Retrospectives, on the other hand, are scheduled regularly to provide teams with a psychologically safe space to discuss their progress, challenges, and areas for improvement, aiming to foster better team interactions and processes. While postmortems are incident-driven and involve key individuals from the incident response team, retrospectives are more informal and inclusive, allowing team members to reflect on their work cadence and set actionable goals. The blog encourages utilizing both practices for ongoing development and suggests joining the PagerDuty Community to share experiences and insights.