# Postmortem — Q1 Widget Mini Launch

**Category:** Postmortem  
**Launch:** Q1 Widget Mini  
**Date:** 2026-02-28  
**Author:** Sample Launch Operations

> Fictional postmortem used by the Launch Coordinator agent to recall lessons
> learned and to seed the readiness checklist for future launches.

## 1. Summary

Q1 Widget Mini launched two weeks late after the support runbooks were
flagged as incomplete during the go/no-go review. The launch was otherwise
clean: engineering shipped on time, marketing exceeded the awareness target,
and the early adoption signal beat plan by 12%.

## 2. What went well

* The Launch Coordinator agent surfaced the incomplete support runbooks
  during the daily blocker triage seven days before go/no-go, which gave
  the team enough runway to remediate without a longer slip.
* Cross-functional dailies were lightweight and high signal.
* The escalation policy worked as designed: the marketing blocker on Day 18
  was acknowledged inside the 24-hour window and resolved in 36 hours.

## 3. What went wrong

* The support runbook gate has historically been a trailing indicator. The
  team did not allocate a dedicated owner until eight weeks before launch.
* The compliance review depended on a vendor whose review SLA slipped from
  five business days to nine.
* The launch announcement blog draft was passed between three reviewers
  without a single owner, causing two rounds of unnecessary edits.

## 4. Action items

* **AI-1 (Owner: Support manager).** Allocate a dedicated runbook owner at
  T-12 weeks for every future launch.
* **AI-2 (Owner: Compliance officer).** Negotiate or replace the vendor with
  a slower SLA. Track turn-around in `lc_StatusUpdate`.
* **AI-3 (Owner: Marketing manager).** Adopt the single-owner-per-asset
  rule for launch announcements. The Launch Coordinator agent flags any
  asset that has more than one current reviewer.

## 5. Lessons for future launches

* Treat support readiness as a leading milestone, not a trailing one.
* Vendor SLAs must be confirmed in writing at the kickoff meeting.
* The agent's blocker triage is a force multiplier — keep the daily ritual.
* Slipping by two weeks is not the worst outcome if it preserves quality;
  the postmortem explicitly endorses a *deliberate* slip when readiness is
  not green.
