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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 ou
by bakhy 10y ago
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 ;)
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIn some corners of our industry, postmortem is a standard term for analysis of a project after it has been shipped and work on it has been finished. EDIT: s/In our industry/In some corners of our industry/
- mmanfrin 10y agoThat's a retrospective -- a post mortem usually refers to talking about an incident where something went catastrophically wrong.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI think Agile has already hijacked the word "retrospective" to mean something else - a meeting, not a publication. 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.
- SolaceQuantum 10y agoI'm surprised at this length of thread within a tech context. I believe a similar thread occurred, but with context of scriptwriting, just a day or three ago. That conversation was all about how scriptwriting isn't reasonable or sensible enough and how things should be changed...
- pluma 10y agoIt seems to be a standard term in game development at least: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/ http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/ 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 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)
- modzu 10y agoas "mortem" means death (from the latin "mors"), that is why it's typically used to signal an analysis of a failure, ie, the project is "dead". ah but language evolves in a chaotic way... see also the new definition of "literally"
- TeMPOraL 10y agoTrue. On the other hand, I could care less. https://xkcd.com/1576/ https://xkcd.com/1576/ (see also https://xkcd.com/1108/ https://xkcd.com/1108/) ;).
- pluma 10y agoNo, "I could care less" is never acceptable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
- pluma 10y agoSure, but traditionally in many parts of the industry projects have a limited lifetime and the release is generally the end (i.e. death) of the project. This is especially true in the games industry where until MMOs, DLC and perpetual "early access" came along most projects wouldn't outlive the release date except maybe for a very short support phase. 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.
- bakhy 10y agodidn't know that. now, what does that say about (some corners of) our industry? :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- georgehotelling 10y agoI've seen "postmortem" used frequently for project wrap-up meetings. I try to suggest "postpartum" as an alternative. 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".
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoBecause death is so much more positive when you're talking about development.
- spacemanmatt 10y agoSame
- enraged_camel 10y agoYeah, using "postmortem" as project wrap-up is definitely inaccurate, unless the project failed. We use the term "retrospective" to discuss things like lessons learned etc.
- htrp 10y agowhy not debrief?
- infectoid 10y agoWhat about a good ol' retrospective?!
- ihaveajob 10y agoNot necessarily. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation for an explanation of how postmortem commonly refers to a breakdown of what went on during a project, to learn for the future. In the past, I particularly enjoyed the postmortem stories in Gamasutra, the game developers website.
- fredophile 10y agoPostmortems are often done in software development after a project is complete. They're used to reflect on what went right and what went wrong and help ensure you learn as much as you can from the project you just completed. The name does not indicate that the project was a failure.
- mhb 10y agoThat's what the word "review" is good for.
- fredophile 10y agoReview might also be a good term. However, the number of commenters saying they've seen this term used in the way I described suggests that it is the commonly used term in some segment of the software industry.
- zodPod 10y agoThis! I came here expecting an expose about how it was really just a stupid waste of money and actually was kind of creepy or something.
- Uehreka 10y agoHahaha, I felt a little weird using the term "Postmortem" myself, but as other commenters pointed out, it is a standard usage. "Retrospective" felt too grandiose... I suppose I could've used the term "Review"?
- bakhy 10y agoi must admit, i was unaware that this is used so commonly. that changes things, of course. and i don't really know what to suggest as an alternative... review is ok. or, "a look back"? "lessons learned"? "experiences from building..."? or perhaps drop it altogether, "My Voice Controlled Smart Mirror" sounds sexy enough ;) naming is hard. anyway, just to be clear, this is irrelevant :) nice work!
- sargun 10y agoIMHO, the preferred terms here are "AAR" (After Action Review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After-action_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After-action_review), and "BAR" (Before Action Review).
- alaskamiller 10y agoWe called it AAR (after action reports) in the military. Had to fight with b-school people to move away from the term post-mortems.