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One-Page Incident Report

Document template for Google Docs and Word

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

Every page (2)

Overview

Long postmortems rarely get written, and short notes rarely get read. This template fits an incident onto one page: a headline stating the cause and effect, impact in three figures, four numbered findings and a recommendation band, followed by a guide page for adapting it.

The sample is a SEV2 incident at Amberley Software, a fictional software company: a connection pool limit cut a service's capacity for 82 minutes on March 2, 2027. It shows times in UTC, impact, root cause, the fix and two owned follow-ups. Replace the incident ID, times, impact and root cause with your own.

Useful for

  • A small engineering team writing up a one-hour outage the day after it happens
  • An on-call engineer giving leadership the cause, the impact and the next two actions
  • A support lead who needs a plain-language summary to share with affected customers

What's included

  • Headline with incident ID, severity and duration, and a standfirst a customer could read
  • Three impact figures: customers affected, requests failing at peak and credits issued
  • Four numbered findings: what happened, impact, the fix and follow-ups with owners
  • Recommendation band for the one change that prevents recurrence
  • A make-it-yours page with five steps for replacing the sample content

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

  3. 3

    Replace the impact figures and root cause with your own, keeping only the contributing factors you can evidence.

  4. 4

    Give every follow-up one owner, one due date and a tracker link, and delete any you will not fund.

  5. 5

    Delete the Make it yours page, then share the report 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

Why is the report blameless?

Naming a person as the cause teaches the team to hide the next mistake. Describing systems and decisions shows why the failure was possible, which is what you can fix.

Is one page enough for a postmortem?

For most small-team incidents, yes. Add a timeline page if you need one, but keep the cause, impact, fix and two or three owned follow-ups on the first page so leaders read them.

Is the Amberley Software incident real?

No. Amberley Software, the people named, the incident and every figure are fictional sample data. Replace them with your own details before you share the report.

  • #incident-report
  • #postmortem
  • #blameless-postmortem
  • #post-incident-review
  • #sre
  • #outage-report
  • #google-docs

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