Skip to content
WorkspaceTemplates
The first pages of the Incident Postmortem template

Incident Postmortem

Document template for Google Docs and Word

Make a copy in Google Docs
Type
Document
Price
Free
Pages
9 · US Letter
Style
Modern
Difficulty
Beginner
Updated
October 30, 2026

Every page (9)

Overview

After an outage, teams either write nothing or write a story that blames a person. This postmortem gives on-call and SRE teams a fixed order instead: summary, impact against service levels, a UTC timeline, the chain of causes, contributing factors, what went well and a checklist of actions with owners and dates.

The sample follows Hollybrook Systems through a 72-minute SEV2 caused by a database pool setting, with 4,200 customers affected and an 85% error budget burn. Replace the incident ID and UTC times first, rebuild the timeline from your paging tool, and give every action one owner and one due date.

Useful for

  • A post-incident review held within a week of a customer-facing outage
  • A blameless write-up for the CTO and customer support after a SEV1 or SEV2
  • A shared record that shows security and compliance what failed and what will change

What's included

  • Executive summary with headline figures, four key findings and a recommendation
  • Impact page with service-level scorecard, affected services and an error budget definition
  • Gantt timeline of the incident phases in UTC, plus a vertical timeline and chain of causes
  • Two-column page on contributing factors with a pull quote and what was learned
  • What went well and what went badly grid, key dates and actions to carry forward
  • Action checklist with owners, due dates and a month Gantt, then a make-it-yours guide

How to use it

  1. 1

    Click Make a copy in Google Docs, then confirm on the Google page. The copy is saved to your own Google Drive.

  2. 2

    Set the incident ID, severity and the UTC start and end times, then replace the summary with two sentences a customer would understand.

  3. 3

    Rebuild the timeline from your paging tool and chat export, one line per event, and replace the root cause with your own chain of causes.

  4. 4

    Give every action item one owner, one due date and a tracker link, and delete any action you will not fund.

  5. 5

    Delete the guide page, then share the postmortem with your team or present it at the review.

What you need

Requirements

  • A Google account with access to Google Drive

Works with

  • Google Docs
  • Microsoft Word (download the .docx)

Questions

What makes this postmortem blameless?

It describes systems and decisions, never individuals. The root cause asks why a change could be shipped, which finds the missing safeguard instead of a person to blame.

Why are all times in UTC?

UTC lets the timeline reconcile with graphs, logs and paging tools, which rarely share a local time zone. Convert chat times before you build the timeline.

Are the company and incident real?

No. Hollybrook Systems, the people, the email addresses, the incident and every figure in the sample are fictional. Replace them with your own details before sharing.

  • #incident-postmortem
  • #blameless-postmortem
  • #post-incident-review
  • #sre
  • #on-call
  • #root-cause-analysis
  • #google-docs

Related templates

More Google Docs templatesMore developer workflows templates

More incident postmortem templates

See all 5

Also in Developer workflows

All developer workflows templates
Get this template

    What you get

      Use this templateSee full details

      Preparing your template…