Postmortem Cadence

Within 7 days.

Overview

Postmortem cadence is a hard deadline on completion. Seven days after the incident is the typical default; faster than that loses thoroughness, slower than that loses memory and momentum.

Within 7 days. PM published within seven calendar days. Engineers still remember the details; action items still feel urgent.
Forcing function. The deadline forces prioritisation. Without it, PMs slip indefinitely behind feature work.
Fresh context. Recent timelines are accurate; week-old timelines have gaps; month-old timelines are reconstructions.
Cultural signal plus public tracking. Cadence signals that PMs matter; late PMs visible to leadership produce accountability.

The approach

Three habits make the cadence stick: set the deadline at incident start, assign the owner immediately, and track completion publicly so slips are visible.

Set deadline at incident start. 7 days post-incident-close, written into the incident record. Owner sees the deadline before the bridge ends.
Named owner. One engineer named as PM author at incident creation. Ambiguity here is the leading cause of slipped PMs.
Track completion publicly. Late PMs visible on the engineering operating dashboard. Slips have a name attached.
Extensions with cause plus documented policy. Major incidents earn an extension; the policy lives in the wiki for new on-call to reference.

Why this compounds

Each on-time PM reinforces the cadence. The team’s completion rate climbs; the action-item backlog stays current; engineering culture absorbs the rhythm.

Higher completion rate. On-time PMs become the norm. The team’s incident record stops having holes.
Better PM quality. Fresh context produces accurate timelines and useful analysis. Reconstruction-from-memory is the leading cause of bad PMs.
Cultural reinforcement. On-time PMs signal engineering rigour. New engineers see the cadence as the standard.
Year-one investment, year-two habit. The first quarter is heavy enforcement. By year two the cadence is reflexive.