i understand i'm nitpicking, but maybe someone should tell the author what "mortem" means? i was expecting something dead, a failure story. pick another worn out phrase ;)
Occasionally I've been shot down because "postpartum" is linked to postpartum depression, and so it's not a very positive term to use. Instead we keep using the apparently more-positive "postmortem".
We use the term "retrospective" to discuss things like lessons learned etc.
EDIT:
s/In our industry/In some corners of our industry/
For better or worse, that's how the word "postmortem" is used in some corners of programming world. I've become familiar with it in gamedev circles, something like 10 to 15 years ago.
You're right that in our corner of the industry it typically refers to particular incidents, though.
It seems pointless to argue which one is more correct, though.
For the record, here's Wikipedia's take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation
Key quote:
> A project post-mortem is a process, usually performed at the conclusion of a project, to determine and analyze elements of the project that were successful or unsuccessful.
(emphasis added)
(see also https://xkcd.com/1108/)
;).
So it's less about language evolution than about different connotations of the word "death". The end of a project is its natural death, the failure of a project is a premature death.
Using the term postmortem for an end-of-life retrospective may seem morbid, but it's no more inaccurate than using it for an incident debrief -- because if you want to be that pedantic, a failure that doesn't result in the end of a project is not a "death" either.
naming is hard.
anyway, just to be clear, this is irrelevant :) nice work!