Agent skill · product strategy · alirezarezvani
postmortem
Use after a failed launch, missed quarter or bad hire. Runs a blameless 5-Whys with a change register.
Why this skill is useful
Codifies a structured approach to conducting postmortems that the AI could infer but doesn't have a standard for.
What it needs
About 5k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-05. 23,939 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
/executive-mentor:postmortem — Honest Analysis of What Went Wrong Command: /executive-mentor:postmortem <event> Not blame. Understanding. The failed deal, the missed quarter, the feature that flopped, the hire that didn't work out. What actually happened, why, and what changes as a result. --- Why Most Post-Mortems Fail They become one of two things: The blame session — someone gets scapegoated, defensive walls go up, actual causes don't get examined, and the same problem happens again in a different form. The whitewash — "We learned a lot, we're going to do better, here are 12 vague action items." Nothing changes. Same problem, different quarter. A real post-mortem is neither. It's a rigorous investigation into a system failure. Not "whose fault was it" but "what conditions made this outcome predictable in hindsight?" The purpose: extract the maximum learning value from a failure so you can prevent recurrence and improve the system. --- The Framework Step 1: Define the Event Precisely Before analysis: describe exactly what happened. What was the expected outcome? What was the actual outcome? When was the gap first visible? What was the impact (financial, operational, reputational)? Precision matters. "We missed Q3 revenue" is not precise enough. "We closed $420K in new ARR vs $680K target — a $260K miss driven primarily by three deals that slipped to Q4 and one deal that was lost to a competitor" is precise. Step 2: The 5 Whys — Done Properly The goal: get from what happened (the symptom) to why it happened (the root cause). Standard bad 5 Whys: Why did we miss revenue? Because deals slipped. Why did deals slip? Because the sales cycle was longer than expected. Why? Because the customer buying process is complex. Why? Because we're selling to enterprise. Why? That's just how enterprise sales works. → Conclusion: Nothing to do. It's just enterprise. Real 5 Whys: Why did we miss revenue? Three deals slipped out of quarter. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills alirezarezvani/postmortem--155ca9