The best postmortems are blameless (see Blameless Retrospective), examine systems rather than individuals, and produce a small number of specific, owned action items. Without those action items, a postmortem is a confession, not a learning event.
Glossary
Postmortem
What happened, and what changes.
In short
A structured retrospective conducted after a project, launch, incident, or decision has concluded — particularly when the outcome was negative — to surface root causes and extract lessons that improve future performance. The medical metaphor is intentional: the goal is diagnostic, not prosecutorial.
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Related terms.
Term
Paradox of Choice
A phenomenon described by psychologist Barry Schwartz in which expanding the number of options available to a decision-maker decreases satisfaction with the eventual choice, increases regret, and often produces no choice at all.
Definition TermPosition Tracking
The systematic monitoring of how each AI expert's stance on a question evolves — or holds firm — as they research and react to one another.
Definition TermPre-Mortem Analysis
A decision-making technique developed by psychologist Gary Klein in which a team imagines that a project or decision has already failed, then works backward to identify the most likely causes.
Definition TermPrompt Framing Effect
The phenomenon whereby the phrasing, structure, and implicit assumptions embedded in a question systematically bias the responses generated by large language models.
Definition TermProspect Theory
A behavioral-economics theory developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky that describes how people actually evaluate gains and losses under risk — as distinct from how classical economics assumes they should.
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