Replace "post mortem" with another term
We don't use violent analogies at GitLab: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/#management-team
"Post mortem" is not violent per se. But it can be taken as such. And it's grim at best.
an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death
Let's discuss another term. Ideas:
- Rapidly rename it "lessons learned"
- Formally adopt a framework like 5 Whys and call it that
- Other?
What do we call a post-mortem today? Typically in response to an infra outage, a security vuln, a missed support SLA. Something off-nominal. And the results are communicated to internal groups like sales, and sometimes affected customers. It's a little different.
This is in contrast too a retrospective, which is about improving process and results. And it part of a monthly development cadence.
Edited by Eric Johnson