Creating a postmortem
From a resolved incident
- Open the incident detail.
- Click Create postmortem in the header or the prompt shown after resolution.
- Obsy pre-fills the postmortem with:
- Incident title and severity
- Incident timeline
- RCA summary, root cause, contributing factors, and recommendations (if an RCA exists)
- Edit and expand each section, then click Save.
From an RCA
Open the RCA detail page and click Create postmortem from RCA. Same pre-fill behavior.Manually
Go to Postmortems in the sidebar and click New postmortem. Start from a blank template.Postmortem sections
| Section | What to write |
|---|---|
| Title | Clear, factual title. Avoid blame language. |
| Date | When the incident occurred |
| Authors | Who wrote this document |
| Severity | Incident severity level |
| Duration | Time from first alert to resolution |
| Impact | Who was affected and how |
| Timeline | Key events in chronological order |
| Root cause | Technical cause (from RCA or manual analysis) |
| Contributing factors | What made it worse or harder to catch |
| What went well | Things the team did well during response |
| What went wrong | What failed — technically or procedurally |
| Action items | Specific tasks with owners and due dates |
Editing a postmortem
Open any postmortem from the Postmortems list and click Edit. All fields are editable. Click Save to persist changes.Sharing a postmortem
Postmortems are visible to all members of your organization. Copy the URL from your browser to share a link directly to a specific postmortem.Best practices
- Write blameless postmortems. Focus on systems and processes, not individuals.
- Write while it’s fresh. Start within 24–48 hours of resolution.
- Be specific about action items. Each item needs an owner and a due date — vague items don’t get done.
- Share widely. Postmortems should be accessible to your whole engineering team, not just the people on the incident.