# Driving Discussions via Postmortem Analysis

Innovation means taking risks, and risky behavior sometimes leads to process failures.
An example of a recent process failure was the Rust 1.52.0 release, and subsequent [1.52.1 patch release][] that followed a few days later.

Every failure presents an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and correct our processes going forward<!-- to prevent future failures ideally, or at least limit the negative fallout of failure events -->.

In response to the 1.52.0 event, the compiler team recently went through a ["course correction" postmortem process][fingerprint COE] inspired by the "Correction of Error" reviews that pnkfelix has observed at Amazon.
This talk describes the structure of a formal postmortem, and discusses how other Rust teams might deploy similar postmortem activities for themselves.

[1.52.1 patch release]: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2021/05/10/Rust-1.52.1.html
[fingerprint COE]: https://hackmd.io/DhKzaRUgTVGSmhW8Mj0c8A