Retrospectives

Note: You can transition to or from these states at any time. If an incident type/severity has "Require Retrospective" enabled in settings, the incident channel will not be archived until the Retrospective has been published, even if the incident is resolved.

Custom Questions contain required fields (*) so you must fill those in before you can publish the Retrospective.

If a Retrospective is required and you still want to archive the channel without publishing the Retrospective, you may set it to the "Not Required" state.

You can prevent users from changing the status of a retrospective to "Published", "Not required", "Approved" or "Rejected" until the incident is resolved, by turning on the Require Resolved Incident setting is turned on under incident type settings. To be enforced, it needs to be set before starting a new incident.

Note: Any Slack users can be selected if the Slack integration is enabled, or any Microsoft Teams users if the Microsoft Teams integration is enabled (but not both at the same time).

Any authorized Blameless user can assign anyone from the Slack user directory as the Retrospective owner for a Retrospective from the Blameless web console (UI).

Those retrospective roles can also be assigned to users on the Retrospective page via the Blameless web UI.

Note: When a Retrospective owner is assigned via UI, the state of the Retrospective changes to "Assigned" automatically.

Note: These timings can be edited by clicking on the edit icon.

Detection Time​

The Detection Time timestamp is used to more accurately capture the actual time of detection of a problem tracked under a Blameless incident. It is automatically added to an incident and is initially set to the same time as the creation of the incident. It can then be manually updated and only set to a date and time earlier than the creation date and time.

Tags​

Similar to the tags on the Incident page, tags is presented here again to provide users with a powerful mechanism for you to capture and label metadata for incidents which can later be viewed in Reliability Insights reports and queries.

Follow-up actions can be added at any point during an incident, especially during a Retrospective. They can be added by clicking the "Add Action" button or the more actions menu.

Edit an Existing Follow-up Action​

1. Mouse over the pencil ion at the edit of the line holding the desired follow-up action. You will see an info window pop up confirming you can edit the action.

2. Click on the pencil. The line immediately shifts to the right, displaying a radio button.

3. Click on the radio button. A check box fills the button, the State column of the action changes from Open to Closed or vice versa.

Reference an External Ticket​

1. Click on the ticket icon. The “Reference an external ticket” window opens, requesting a well formed, required URL that must start with either an http or https header.

2. Once the valid URL is added, the “SUBMIT” button will go active and you to attach the reference to the follow-up action.

Adding a new Action​

1. Click on the ellipse and select the “plus” icon or Add Action link. A “New Follow-up Action” window opens.

When adding a new action, you will be prompted to fill out standard fields such as:

• Summary

• Assignee

• Type

1. Enter the Summary describing the new action.

2. Start typing the name of the Assignee. Blameless will autofill as you enter more letters.

3. Select the Type. You options are:

   • Mitigation

   • Prevention

   • Process

4. (Optional) Change the default Jira Project name to a different one. Blameless will autofill as you enter more letters.

5. (Optional) Change the default JIRA Issue Type from the drop down menu. Your options are:

   • Task

   • Sub-task

   • Story

   • Bug

   • Epic

6. Select a Priority value.

7. (Optional) Change the default value for each required Jira field.

8. Click on the “Create Action” button.

Root Cause​

The root cause analysis section provides a traditional N-Whys method for your team to dive deep into the root incident cause. You may identify one item as the root cause.

Retrospective Analysis Tab​

The analysis section lets users collaborate on a Retrospective writeup together in real-time.

Adding Images to the Analysis​

The analysis section supports rich text with formatting via the toolbar, as well as the ability to easily add images from the event timeline or direct upload into the analysis.

For more information on how to configure the Retrospective analysis template, refer to the Settings Guide.

Retrospective Sidebar​

The sidebar focuses on collaboration with comments, event timeline, authors, and team.

Collaboration Avatars​

When multiple users are collaborating on a Retrospective, the sidebar features avatars indicating which users are editing the Retrospective.

Comments​

Commenting allows users to collaborate and create a historical stream of discussion with support for replies and @ mentions.

When a user is @ mentioned, they will receive a notification from Blameless Bot drawing their attention to the Retrospective where they have been mentioned.

Comments may also be resolved once a point of discussion has come to a conclusion.

Events Timeline​

Similar to the events timeline on the Incident page, the timeline is presented here again to provide users with an overview of key events for help in writing up their analysis.

Retrospective Collaborators and Team​

The complete team and collaborators can easily be viewed from the sidebar.

In addition to a Retrospective owner, users may also be assigned the collaborative roles of authors and reviewers during an incident using Blameless Bot.

Note: If the status of the Retrospective is “Unassigned”, but an owner is assigned via bot or UI, Blameless changes the state to "Assigned" automatically.

Once assigned roles, the user will be notified.