Automation Failure Post-Mortem Template and Review of One Incident
Review an automation incident and prevent repeats.
Added October 15, 2026. Written with AI assistance and checked for clarity and placeholders; not reviewed by a lawyer, accountant, clinician or other professional. How these prompts are made
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Run a blameless post-mortem for an automation incident. What happened and the timeline with timestamps: [INCIDENT_TIMELINE]. Impact: [IMPACT]. Detection and response: [DETECTION_AND_RESPONSE]. Contributing factors known: [CONTRIBUTING_FACTORS]. Produce a post-mortem with a summary, a timeline table, impact with numbers, root and contributing causes using five whys (stopping when the cause is a system or process, not a person), what went well, what went badly, and actions with owner, date and measure. Calculate time to detect and time to recover from the timestamps with the arithmetic. Check for missing safeguards (approval, limits, alerts, rollback). Provide a short communication to affected people and a follow-up review date. Keep the tone blameless. Mark assumptions as such. Add a worked timeline example: 09:10 automation sends 400 emails to the wrong list, 09:25 first customer reply, 09:40 detected, 09:55 stopped, so time to detect 30 minutes and time to stop 45; five whys that end at 'no approval step for list changes'; actions with owners and dates.
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