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• Was the software produced in a timely manner?
• Was the software of sufficient quality?
• Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve for our next project?
Once the survey results are collected, they should be summarized and presented in the
postmortem report. The report should focus on the overall results rather than individual
responses. Figure 8-1 shows a typical summary section that would appear at the top of a
postmortem report. In this example, the questions in the survey were grouped into six
categories, and the results were divided into positive, neutral, or negative ratings.

Post-Mortem Survey Results
Now that we've released the software to 83% of the client base, it's a
good time to take stock of the things that we did right when releasing
the software, and to point out places where we can improve. To help us
determine our areas for improvement, we sent a survey to everybody
involved with the release: the Software Engineering team, Sales, Client
Support, Level 1 Technical Support, the Implementation Team and
selected other people who played a part in the release. Of 66 possible
respondents, we received 34 responses.
100%
90%
80%
Negative
70%
Neutral
60% Positive
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Client Requirements Schedule Quality Usability Planning
experience gathering

FIGURE 8-1. Sample summary section from a postmortem report

Each of the remaining sections in the report shows details about the response for each
individual question, followed by final sections that offer recommendations and specific

actions to take. (The actual postmortem survey should be attached to the report as an
appendix.) Each section should summarize the results of one question in the survey and
present any comments given (without any identifying factors). It is important to preserve
the respondents’ anonymity so that they can feel comfortable giving their uncensored
opinions. If several respondents had similar or related comments, those comments should
be combined into one single statement that summarizes all of them. Not every comment
will be constructive; the QA engineer preparing the report should use judgement to decide
which comments are relevant. Table 8-8 shows an example of a section of the report that
summarizes one question.

188 CHAPTER EIGHT