The Postmortem Ritual
Institutionalize learning by dissecting every project while memory is fresh
Pixar conducts postmortems after every film production, not just the troubled ones. The goal is to consolidate what was learned, document it, and make it available to the next project. But Catmull acknowledges that postmortems are harder than they sound because people naturally resist examining what went wrong, especially after the relief of finishing a grueling project.
The key insight is that the first conclusions drawn from successes and failures are typically wrong. Measuring outcomes without evaluating process is inherently deceiving. A successful film might have succeeded despite deeply flawed processes, and a troubled production might have contained innovations worth preserving. The postmortem forces teams to look beyond outcomes and examine the actual work processes.
Catmull also notes that postmortems create institutional knowledge that persists even when individuals leave. When lessons are documented and shared across teams, the entire organization levels up rather than each new team starting from scratch and repeating predecessors' mistakes.
- The first conclusions drawn from successes and failures are typically wrong
- Measuring outcomes without evaluating process is deceiving
- Postmortems must happen after successes too, not just failures
- Resist the urge to skip the postmortem because the team is exhausted from shipping
- Document and share findings across teams to build institutional memory
- Focus on systems and processes, not individual blame
- Schedule the postmortem before the project endsIf you wait until after the project ships to schedule the review, the team will disperse, memory will fade, and the relief of completion will sap motivation to reflect. Put the postmortem on the calendar as a non-negotiable part of the project plan.
- Gather data and perspectives from all levelsCollect input from everyone involved, not just leadership. Junior team members often have the most unfiltered perspective on process issues. Use surveys, interviews, and group sessions to gather diverse viewpoints before the formal review.
- Separate what happened from why it happenedFirst establish a shared factual timeline: what decisions were made, what milestones were hit or missed, what changed. Only after agreeing on the facts should the group discuss causes and interpretations. This prevents the discussion from collapsing into competing narratives.
- Focus on process, not peopleAsk what systems, structures, or practices led to problems rather than who is to blame. A pattern of missed deadlines might reflect an unrealistic estimation process, not individual laziness. The goal is to fix the system so the next team does not face the same trap.
- Document and distribute learnings concretelyWrite up specific, actionable findings and share them with teams starting new projects. Vague advice like 'communicate better' is useless. Concrete findings like 'our estimation process consistently underestimates rigging time by 40 percent; here is a corrected baseline' create real change.
After each film production, Pixar convened postmortems involving the full production team. When the studio was making only one film at a time, lessons transferred naturally because the same people moved to the next project. As the studio scaled to multiple simultaneous productions with different teams, the postmortem became essential for cross-team knowledge transfer. Teams would discover that problems they spent months solving had already been solved on a parallel production.
Postmortems became formalized at Pixar as the studio scaled from one film at a time to multiple simultaneous productions. With different teams working on different films, there was no organic mechanism for the lessons from one production to reach another. Catmull recognized that without deliberate knowledge transfer, each team would reinvent the wheel and repeat the same painful mistakes their colleagues had already solved.