PagerDuty Postmortem Documentation
PagerDuty's Public Postmortem Documentation
| Category | Incident Response & Forensics |
|---|---|
| GitHub Stars | 65 |
| Last Commit | 2 years ago |
| This page updated | a month ago |
| Pricing Details | Free and open source |
| Target Audience | DevOps teams, incident response teams, and organizations conducting postmortem analyses. |
The PagerDuty postmortem documentation addresses the critical operational challenge of conducting thorough and effective post-incident analyses, particularly for severe incidents (Sev-1 or Sev-2). Here’s a technical overview of the approach and architecture:
The documentation is built using MkDocs, a static site generator, which allows for efficient local development and deployment. The setup involves installing MkDocs and its extensions, such as Pymdown Extensions for Markdown support and Pygments for syntax highlighting. This architecture enables developers to test and update the documentation locally before deploying it to a static site hosted on platforms like S3.
The postmortem process is structured around a detailed template and checklist. For each incident, a ticket template is cloned with subtasks that guide the team through the postmortem steps. This ensures consistency and visibility throughout the process. However, this approach can be resource-intensive, especially for large or complex incidents, as it requires meticulous documentation and collaboration among team members.
The documentation is version-controlled on GitHub, allowing for collaborative contributions and tracking of changes. The use of MkDocs enables automatic updates to the site as code is edited, facilitating real-time feedback during development. For deployment, the static site is built using mkdocs build --clean and then synced to an S3 bucket, ensuring public accessibility.
The postmortem template includes sections for incident summary, timeline, root cause analysis, and action items, among others. This structured approach helps in standardizing the postmortem process and ensuring that all critical aspects are covered. However, the manual nature of cloning templates and updating checklists can introduce latency and may not scale for very large teams or frequent incidents.
In summary, the PagerDuty postmortem documentation provides a robust framework for conducting thorough incident analyses, but it requires careful management to ensure it remains efficient and scalable.