Post-mortem

How it is used

Founders often write public post-mortems after shutting down a startup, and teams hold post-mortems after outages or failed launches. A good one is blameless: it focuses on causes and lessons, not on blaming people. Also written postmortem.

Example sentences

1. In his post-mortem, the founder wrote that they scaled before customers really needed the product.

2. Let's hold a post-mortem on the failed launch next week.

Common collocations

• write a post-mortem
• hold a post-mortem
• blameless post-mortem
• startup post-mortem

Related terms

• shut downTo close a company or product and stop operating, usually because it has run out of money or the business is not working.
• fail fastThe idea of testing ideas quickly and cheaply so that you find out early what does not work and can stop or change direction before wasting time and money.
• pivotTo change a basic part of your business, such as the product, the customer group or the way you make money, because the original plan is not working.
• lean startupA method of building a company by testing ideas quickly with real customers in a build, measure, learn cycle, instead of following a long, fixed plan.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• post-mortem · Project Management

More terms: Pivots, Failure & Exits

• exit
• acquisition
• IPO