Productivity
After-Action Review
Run a structured retrospective on a project, launch, or incident.
Run an after-action review on the event below.
Event: {{describe what happened}}
Goal: {{what we set out to achieve}}
Result: {{what actually happened}}
Timeline: {{rough sequence of events}}
Output:
• What was supposed to happen — restate the plan clearly
• What actually happened — restate the outcome, with key moments
• Why it diverged — root causes, not just symptoms (use "but why?" 3 times)
• What worked well — what to keep doing
• What didn't — what to stop or change
• What we learned — surprises, misconceptions corrected
• Action items — concrete changes for next time, with owners
Rules:
• Blameless tone — we're learning, not assigning fault
• Be specific — generic learnings ("we should communicate better") are useless
• Push back on conventional explanations — challenge assumed causes
• End with: "What would we do differently if we ran this again tomorrow?"