Incident postmortem without the missing timeline.
Most postmortems are written weeks after the incident when memory has faded and action items have drifted. This template enforces the same structure every time so patterns surface and fixes actually ship.
For engineering & sre teams. No credit card. First run in under a minute.
Incident Postmortem #INC-0317
API timeout cascade · Severity 1 · 2h 45m downtime
- Declare incident owner100%Incident CommanderSLA 30min
- Capture timelineIncident CommanderEvidence
- Root cause analysisEngineering5-whys method
- Contributing factorsEngineering
- Action itemsEngineeringEvidence
- Team reviewResponse Team
- Publish postmortemTech LeadApproval gateDep. pendente
- Verify action items closedBLOQUEADAIncident CommanderDep. pendente
Opinion
What we cut. And what we kept.
This template is repeatable, not comprehensive. Comprehensive is why postmortems get postponed.
Cut
- Free-form incident write-ups in Confluence.
- Action items in a separate tracker.
- Postmortems published before team review.
- Root cause without structured 5-whys.
Kept
- Incident owner declared within 30 minutes.
- Timeline captured while memory is fresh.
- Tech lead approval gate before publication.
- Action item verification built into the flow.
What this template includes
Process steps
- 1Declare incident owner and set severity level within 30 minutes of detection
- 2Capture incident timeline: what happened, when, and who was involved
- 3Identify root cause using the 5-whys method, document in structured fields
- 4List contributing factors: process gaps, tooling failures, communication issues
- 5Define action items with owner and due date for each corrective measure
- 6Review draft postmortem with the full response team for accuracy
- 7Publish final postmortem to the team, technical lead sign-off gate
- 8Verify action items closed at the agreed deadline
Why teams use this template
Postmortems work best when they're consistent. When every incident follows a different format, some in Confluence, some in email, some not written at all, the patterns that cause repeated outages never surface.
This template enforces the same structure every time: timeline, root cause, contributing factors, and action items with owners. The single approval gate ensures the postmortem is reviewed before it's published, not after questions start arriving.
Ready to run this process?
Open this template in Cadenio, customize the fields and approvals for your context, and run it for the first time in under 60 seconds.
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