Technical incident post-mortem
When to use: after a system outage, data loss scare, or security event. How to use: paste your timeline of what happened and what was done — never share credentials or personal data — and ask for a blameless post-mortem.
Higher-risk prompt — human review is required before you act on the output.
This prompt touches safeguarding, wellbeing, funding claims or public communications. Verify facts, remove personal details and check with a colleague before using the result.
When to use this prompt
Reach for this prompt when you need to when to use: after a system outage, data loss scare, or security event. How to use: paste your timeline of what happened and what was done — never share credentials or personal data — and ask for a blameless post-mortem. It's designed for IT Lead. Typically used within Data work.
Not suitable for real-time decisions about individuals, safeguarding cases, or public claims without human sign-off.
How to use it
- 1
Gather your inputs
Have your local context, audience and goal to hand. - 2
Fill in the template
Copy the template below and replace every bracketed placeholder with real, local context. Keep names and safeguarding details out. - 3
Run it in your AI tool
Paste into your preferred AI assistant. Ask a follow-up if the output misses your association's tone or context. - 4
Review with the checklist
Work through the human-review checklist below before you send, publish or act on the output.
Prefer a guided flow? Adapt with the guided builder — it fills placeholders from your association profile.
Prompt template
Produce a blameless post-mortem for the following technical incident: {TIMELINE_ANONYMISED}. Structure: what happened, impact (users, services, data), what worked in the response, what didn't, root cause (system, not person), 3–5 actions with owners and dates, what we'll change in our monitoring. No blame of named individuals.Replace bracketed placeholders with real context. Never paste identifying details about children, health or safeguarding cases.
Worked example
Timeline: booking system down 09:00–13:00, cause identified in DB migration
What good output looks like
A blameless post-mortem draft ready for the IT / ops leadership to review.
Why this prompt works
Learns from IT incidents without triggering defensive behaviour.
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