We’re thrilled that you want to contribute to improving the system in the wake of an incident! For each post-incident action that you are proposing, we would appreciate it if you would fill out the following template.

Please estimate the expected benefits associated with implementing the action item. For example, if this reduces risk, by how much? Please document your risk model. How will you validate this estimate?

Please estimate the costs associated with implementing the proposed action items. In particular:

• What are the costs in engineering effort (person-days of work) to do the initial implementation?
• What are the ongoing maintenance costs in terms of engineering effort?
• What are the additional infrastructure costs?

In addition, please estimate the opportunity costs associated with this action item: if this action item is prioritized, what other important work will be deprioritized as a result? What were the expected benefits of the deprioritized work? How do these unrealized benefits translate into additional costs or risks?

Given that we know we can never implement things perfectly (otherwise the incident wouldn’t have happened, right?), what are the risks associated with a bug or other error when implementing the proposed action item?

Even if the action item is implemented flawlessly, the resulting change in behavior can lead to unforeseen interactions with other parts of the system. Please generate a list of potential harmful interactions that could arise when this action item is implemented. Please be sure to track these and refer back to them if a future incident occurs that involves this action item, to check how well we are able to reason about such interactions.

More generally: will the proposed action item increase or decrease the overall complexity of the system? If it will increase complexity, compare what the costs and/or risks are of the resulting increase in complexity, and compare these to the proposed benefits of the implemented action item.

Will the proposed action item increase or decrease the overall cognitive load on people? If it will increase cognitive load, please estimate the expected magnitude of this increase, and document a plan for evaluating the actual increase after the action item has been implemented.

Beyond cognitive load, is this action going to prevent or otherwise make more difficult any work that goes on today? How will you identify whether this is the case or not? Please document your plan for measuring the resultant increase in difficulty due to the action item.

More generally: will the implementation of this action item lead to people changing the way they do they work? What sort of workarounds or other adaptations may occur as a result, and what are the associated risks of these? What are all of the different types of work that go on in the organization that will be impacted by this change? How will you verify that your list is complete? Please document your plan for studying how the work has actually changed in response to this action item, and how you will contrast the findings with your expectations.

Once the action item has been completed, how are you going to track it unexpectedly contributes to an incident in the future? Please outline your plan for how we will maintain accountability for the impact of completed action items.