There are various, frequently-used premortem and postmortem techniques adopted by site reliability engineers (SRE) to diagnose issues and come up with problem resolution ideas and alternative approaches. To do this effectively, SREs need to account for several factors at play, including the workplace culture and work collaboration.
In this course, you'll learn how to promote a blameless culture - one without finger-pointing and animated language. You'll explore the key characteristics of good and bad postmortems, and discover the benefits of reviewing postmortems, sharing knowledge, giving feedback, and rewarding positive behavior. You'll then learn how to respond to postmortem culture implementation failure. Lastly, you'll discover how using the right postmortem templates and postmortem management tools can improve how you write postmortems and manage their associated data.
outline a premortem approach and describe its benefits
recognize how to do a premortem on a project and the best practices to follow
outline the concept of postmortem and postmortem culture
list the goals of writing a postmortem, such as documenting the incident, root causes, and preventative actions
describe the idea of blameless postmortems
outline how to achieve a blameless postmortem
list benefits of a blameless postmortem culture shift
identify best practices for implementing a thriving postmortem culture
recognize the value of collaboration and knowledge-sharing throughout the postmortem workflow
describe why it is important to review postmortems
list activities that could help introduce a new postmortem culture such as 'postmortem of the month,' 'postmortem groups,' 'clubs,' etc.
identify how asking for feedback can increase postmortem effectiveness
list some examples of bad postmortems and potential areas for improvement, such as missing context, omitted details, missing action items, finger-pointing, and animated language
outline a healthy postmortem, including clarity, concrete action items, blamelessness, depth, promptness, and conciseness
list the benefits of enforcing blameless behavior such as using blameless language
give reasons why it is essential to reward postmortem outcomes
outline why it is beneficial to share postmortems as widely as possible
describe how to respond to postmortem culture failures
list the benefits of using a postmortem template
identify how tools can help facilitate postmortem culture