# Better learning from incidents: A guide to incident post-mortem documents

DevFeed: [Better learning from incidents: A guide to incident post-mortem documents](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/better-learning-from-incidents-a-guide-to-incident-post-mortem-documents-12069.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://incident.io/blog/what-is-a-post-mortem-document>)

Author: Luis Gonzalez

Published: 2023-09-27T18:45:18Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [The incident.io Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-incident-io-blog.md>)

Topics: [Post Mortem](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/post-mortem.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>), [Incident response](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident-response.md>)

Tags: [guide](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/guide.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [incident-channel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-channel.md>), [incident-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-management.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [learning](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/learning.md>), [outage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/outage.md>), [post-mortem](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/post-mortem.md>), [report](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/report.md>), [retrospective](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/retrospective.md>), [slack-incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/slack-incident.md>)

## AI overview

This guide explains post-mortem documents as a way to capture information after an incident, understand contributing factors and risks, and plan actions to prevent or reduce the impact of similar incidents. It distinguishes documents from post-mortem meetings, discusses disagreement about when they are appropriate, and describes blameless post-mortems as an approach that avoids scapegoating. The article also notes alternative terms such as incident debrief documents, Incident Retrospectives, and After Action Reports.

## Source excerpt

Post-mortem documents are a great way to facilitate learning after incidents are resolved.