Built To Last: Incident Review and Postmortem Best Practices

Welcome to this week’s edition of my weekly newsletter “Built To Last”, where I am sharing valuable insights on building high-quality products.

Each week, I curate articles and podcasts that caught my attention – resources that I believe are relevant and insightful for everyone looking to build a great product.

This Week’s Picks

• Incident Review and Postmortem Best Practices – a topic that closely aligns with my work, as my team is involved in every WooCommerce release and incident. Key takeaways include prioritizing learning over simply listing action items, ensuring that reviews remain truly blameless, and committing to meaningful, long-term improvements that enhance system reliability.

• Food for Thought: What Restaurants Can Teach Us about Reliability – this YouTube video isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but I found the analogy interesting – in particular, comparing each evening in a restaurant to an incident, with lessons to be learned. Preparation, a clear hierarchy, and structured communication are essential elements of effective incident response.

• Ethan Eismann – Conversations on Quality (Episode 09) by Linear – Ethan Eismann, SVP of Design at Slack, emphasizes the shift from MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) to MLPs (Minimum Lovable Products) to prioritize craftsmanship and quality. Successful teams move away from rigid workflows (product spec > design > engineering), instead fostering close collaboration between engineers, designers, and PMs. Great products excel in utility, usability, and craft.

• Who should build a culture of quality? – this article explores how various roles within an organization contribute to product quality. While it presents a strong concept, its practical implementation remains unclear, making its usefulness uncertain. Nevertheless, I’m including it here, as it raises an important question worth considering.

• How we reduced manual regression tests by 70% using AI tools – at Duolingo, the QA team reduced manual regression testing of their mobile app by 70% using MobileBoost, an AI tool that automates e2e tests with natural language instructions.

• How Shopify Built Its Live Globe for Black Friday – this article dives into the creative and technical process behind Shopify’s “Live Globe” project, a fun and immersive experience visualizing real-time orders during Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. The piece highlights how pushing the boundaries of fun in product can lead to remarkable results and a great user experience.