A systematic review and analysis conducted after a project, incident, or initiative has ended, aimed at understanding what went well, what went wrong, and what can be learned for future improvement. It focuses on extracting lessons from completed activities.
From Latin 'post mortem' (after death), originally a medical term for examining a body after death to determine cause. Business adopted the term in the 1960s for project reviews, emphasizing the thorough examination of 'dead' or completed projects.
The best post-mortems aren't about assigning blame—they're about understanding systems and processes that led to outcomes. Companies with strong post-mortem cultures actually celebrate failures that generate valuable learning, because they prevent bigger failures later.
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