I'm looking to understand how different teams manage action items that arise from postmortems after incidents. In my experience with small to mid-size teams, we often write postmortems and create action items, but then other work tends to take precedence, leading to several issues like missed deadlines or incomplete changes. I want to know what happens in your teams:
- When an action item misses its due date, what occurs next? Are there consequences?
- Who keeps track of these items and is there any notification sent?
- Does your team document whether incidents led to any actual changes, or do they just fade from memory once things calm down?
- If your team consistently followed through on these action items, how would that influence the on-call experience?
I'm curious about the reality of this process across various teams, as I'm not necessarily looking for best practices, just genuine insights. Thanks in advance!
5 Answers
In my experience, we tend to flag recurring issues for future reviews. If something doesn't get resolved after a few reminders, we just mention it again in the next RCA. Management needs accountability, so we push for them to prioritize fixes after repeated incidents. If they don't care about fixing it, we stop documenting suggestions because it's clearly not a priority for them anymore.
Unfortunately, what usually happens is that action items just pile up with dev tasks that get deprioritized for new features, and management tends to overlook needed process improvements. We document everything but then just move back to whatever's currently on fire.
Our organization has a clear process involving SREs who conduct RCAs and track tickets diligently. They report on this to our CTO to avoid critical tasks being ignored. Although it’s not perfect, this accountability helps ensure some actions are actually completed.
We assign ownership to incidents and ensure all action items are taken care of before closing. There’s a strong culture that emphasizes following through on these tasks, and I can't recall a time when post-mortem actions weren't completed on time.
We have a dedicated incident management team that keeps a close eye on postmortem actions. They provide monthly reports and maintain a dashboard to track everything. Open action items are displayed on team dashboards and influence our overall product risk assessments. This level of tracking helps keep it visible.
Related Questions
Can't Load PhpMyadmin On After Server Update
Redirect www to non-www in Apache Conf
How To Check If Your SSL Cert Is SHA 1
Windows TrackPad Gestures