Postmortem Solo / 单兵复盘

When to use

• Something didn't go to plan in the last 30 days: outage, failed launch, missed deadline, customer churn spike, broken release.
• The user is the only person responsible — there's no team to interview.
• The goal is one or two concrete changes, not a 10-page report.

When NOT to use

• The incident is still active — fix it first, postmortem after.
• The user wants emotional processing, not a postmortem. Suggest a walk or a friend; this skill is for cold analysis.
• It's a routine setback (one bug in production, one slow week) — not every bump needs a postmortem.

Structure

Five sections, strict word limits:

1. What happened — 3 bullets, factual, no analysis. (≤ 60 words)
2. Impact — what did the failure cost? Users affected, revenue lost, hours sunk, reputation hit. (≤ 40 words)
3. Timeline — bullet list with timestamps if known: trigger → detection → response → resolution. (≤ 100 words)
4. Root cause(s) — apply 5 Whys but stop the moment you hit a systemic cause (process, default, missing tool), not a personal one ("I was tired"). (≤ 80 words)
5. Changes — at most 2 concrete changes with owner (you), due date, and verification method. (≤ 60 words)

Total: ≤ 350 words. If you need more, you're hiding from a decision.

The "no blame, but yes accountability" rule

Solo postmortems have a trap: you're the only person who could have caused this, so it's tempting to either (a) flagellate yourself, or (b) blame externalities ("Stripe was flaky"). Neither is useful.

Correct framing: "What system / habit / default could I change so that next-month-me cannot make this mistake even if next-month-me is tired and distracted?"

This forces solutions toward process, automation, or alarms — not "be more careful next time."

Output format

# Postmortem: <one-sentence headline>

**Date:** <YYYY-MM-DD> — drafted <X> days after the incident.

## What happened
- …
- …
- …

## Impact
…

## Timeline
- HH:MM — <event>
- HH:MM — <event>

## Root cause(s)
…

## Changes
1. <change> — owner: me, due: <date>, verified by: <how I'll know it worked>
2. <change> — owner: me, due: <date>, verified by: <how>

Worked example

Input: "I deployed on Friday afternoon, broke the signup flow for ~6 hours, lost about 40 trial signups before I noticed."

Output:

# Postmortem: Friday-afternoon deploy broke signup for 6 hours

**Date:** 2026-04-30 — drafted 2 days after the incident.

## What happened
- Deployed schema migration at 16:45 local time.
- Migration removed a column the signup form still referenced.
- Signup returned 500 for ~6 hours until I checked Stripe at 22:30.

## Impact
~40 trial signups lost (Stripe shows 0 new customers in the window vs. ~7/hour baseline). Estimated revenue at risk: ~$280/mo if 10% would have converted.

## Timeline
- 16:45 — deploy pushed.
- 16:50 — first 500 (no alert; error logger was rate-limited).
- 22:30 — noticed via empty Stripe dashboard, rolled back migration in 8 min.

## Root cause(s)
The signup form references the dropped column directly, not via an abstraction. CI ran migrations against an empty test DB, so the form-vs-schema mismatch never surfaced. No deploy-time alert fires when 500 rate exceeds baseline.

## Changes
1. Add a basic uptime check that posts a Slack ping on >5x baseline 500s — owner: me, due: 2026-05-03, verified by: triggering a test 500 and confirming the ping.
2. Block deploys after 16:00 local time on Fridays (calendar reminder + git pre-push hook) — owner: me, due: 2026-05-02, verified by: trying to deploy at 17:00 Friday and getting blocked.

Anti-patterns

• "I'll be more careful next time" is not a change. It's a wish. Replace it with a system change.
• More than 2 changes per postmortem. You won't do them. Cut to two.
• Listing root causes that don't tie to a change. If a cause doesn't generate an action, omit it.

---

中文版

何时使用

• 最近 30 天内没按计划走：故障、发布失败、错过 deadline、客户大量流失、版本翻车。
• 用户是唯一负责人——没团队可访谈。
• 目标是一两个具体改动，不是 10 页大报告。

何时不使用

• 故障还在进行中——先修，再复盘。
• 用户想情绪处理而非复盘——建议散步或找朋友聊，这个技能是冷分析。
• 只是常规小坎坷（一个线上 bug，一周不顺）——不是每次都需要复盘。

结构

五段，严格字数限制：

1. 发生了什么——3 条事实，不带分析。(≤ 60 字)
2. 影响——损失了什么？(≤ 40 字)
3. 时间线——触发→发现→响应→修复，带时间戳。(≤ 100 字)
4. 根本原因——5 Why，但停在系统性原因（流程/默认/缺工具），不是"我累了"。(≤ 80 字)
5. 改动——最多两条，要有 owner（你）、截止日、验证方式。(≤ 60 字)

总长 ≤ 350 字。再多就是在逃避决定。

"不归罪但要负责"原则

单兵复盘有个陷阱：唯一可能犯错的就是你，所以容易要么(a)自责，要么(b)甩锅外部。两者都没用。

正确框架： "我能改变什么系统/习惯/默认值，让下个月的我即使累了走神也不会再犯？"

这逼着方案朝流程、自动化、告警走——而不是"下次更小心"。

反模式

• "下次更小心"不是改动，是愿望。换成系统性改动。
• 一次复盘超过 2 条改动——你做不完。砍到两条。
• 列出不对应改动的根因——如果一个根因不会触发行动，删掉。