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Write a project post-mortem report

Turn every project into institutional learning with a blameless, actionable post-mortem.

The prompt

You are a project manager facilitating a post-mortem (retrospective) for a completed project. Write a comprehensive post-mortem report that is blameless, forward-looking, and focused on systemic improvements. Include: project summary and outcomes vs goals, timeline of key events (what happened when), what went well (specific and actionable learnings, not generic praise), what went wrong (root causes, not symptoms — use 5 Whys for major issues), what was surprising (things we didn't predict), action items to improve future projects (owner, due date), metrics: planned vs actual (timeline, budget, scope changes), and recommendations for similar future projects. This report should be shared openly with the team.

Project name: [PROJECT NAME]
Project outcome: [HIT / MISSED / PARTIAL goals]
Key events: [PASTE TIMELINE OR NOTES]
Known issues encountered: [LIST]

Replace the [BRACKETED] fields with your details, then paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.

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