Incident Postmortem Template
Lay out the timeline, impact, causes and actions on one page, and keep the evidence, decisions and owners one click behind every box.
Free forever on the Personal plan
Incident postmortems: an example
The timeline at a glance
From first symptom to recovery, coloured by phase.
Actions with owners
Each action shows its status, and opens its owner and due date.
Blameless by design
Causes are written about the system and the process, not the people.
The basics
What is an incident postmortem?
An incident postmortem, also called a post-incident review, is a written account of an outage or other incident once it is resolved: what happened and when, the impact, why it happened, what went well, and the actions that will stop it happening again or make it shorter. Blameless postmortems focus on the system and the process rather than on individuals.
Postmortems are read by engineers, managers and sometimes customers, and most readers stop at the summary. A one-page view of the timeline, impact, causes and actions gives every reader the story, with the logs, graphs and discussion one click away for anyone who needs them.
In Blueprintr each moment, cause and action is a box with a stratum behind it, and the postmortem can link to the runbooks and guides it changed.
Why Blueprintr
Postmortems people read past the summary
The story on one page, the evidence behind every box.
Timeline and panels
Draw the timeline as a row of moments coloured by phase, with panels for impact, causes and actions underneath.
VellumEvidence behind every box
Give each moment and cause a stratum with graphs as images, log extracts in code blocks and the decisions made at the time.
StratumSnapshots from incident tools
On Enterprise, Continuum Link attaches dated snapshots from PagerDuty, incident.io, Rootly, FireHydrant and more to the incident's records.
ContinuumFollow-ups in one thread
Questions and follow-ups go in the postmortem's Discussion tab, in threads, so nothing is lost in chat.
Linked to what changed
Link each action to the runbook, guide or design it changed, so the next reader sees the fix, not only the failure.
A library of reviews
On the Team plan, keep postmortems in a folium with search, so the next on-call engineer can find the last time it happened.
Folium
How to
How to write an incident postmortem in Blueprintr
Create a private blueprint
Sign up free and create a private blueprint named with the incident number.
Build the timeline
Add a box for each moment, from first symptom to recovery, coloured by phase.
Record the impact
Add what customers and the business felt, with the numbers behind it.
Explain why
Add a box for each contributing factor, written about the system and the process.
Agree the actions
Add each action with its owner and due date, then publish and share the review.
FAQ
Questions about incident postmortems
Is this postmortem template free?
Yes. The Vellum editor, strata, image tabs and Discussion are on the free Personal plan. Snapshots from incident tools with Continuum Link are part of Enterprise.
What should an incident postmortem include?
A short summary, the timeline, the impact, the contributing factors, what went well, and actions with owners and due dates, plus links to anything the incident changed.
What does a blameless postmortem mean?
It explains what the system and the process allowed to happen, rather than who made a mistake. People share what they saw more openly, and the fixes go where they last.
When should a postmortem be written?
Within a week of the incident, while memories and logs are fresh. Many teams require one for every P1 and P2, and hold a short review meeting to agree the actions.
Can I bring in data from PagerDuty or incident.io?
On Enterprise, Continuum Link attaches dated snapshots from tools such as PagerDuty, incident.io and Rootly to a stratum. An editor refreshes them; they never change the diagram.
Can I share a postmortem with customers?
Yes. Many teams publish a shorter public version and keep the internal detail in a private blueprint, shared only with the people who need it.