What is the purpose of 'postmortems' in the incident response process?

The purpose of postmortems in the incident response process is to analyze incidents thoroughly in order to learn from them and prevent future occurrences. After an incident has been resolved, conducting a postmortem allows teams to reflect on what happened, identify root causes, and understand how effective their response was. This reflective process is designed to capture lessons learned, which can then be used to improve systems, processes, and response strategies moving forward.

By establishing a culture of learning from incidents, organizations can enhance their resilience and minimize the likelihood of similar incidents happening again. The valuable insights gained from postmortems are often documented and shared widely, contributing to a knowledge base that informs future incident management practices.

Allocating resources or scheduling on-call rotations, while important aspects of incident response management, do not directly contribute to the primary goal of postmortems. Additionally, while documentation for compliance is a crucial function, it is separate from the proactive learning and improvement focus that defines the postmortem process.