Incident Postmortem with Evidence Trail
by Steve Harlow
A blameless draft postmortem where every timeline entry cites its log, alert, or message, and every action item traces to a cause.
Steve Harlow is Vice President of Engineering at Opus Inspection, where he leads a 125-person engineering organization delivering vehicle emissions and safety testing programs. His career spans over 30 years of software, project management, and IT leadership, including roles at Amazon's Kindle Store, Universal Avionics, Misys Healthcare, and Mister Carwash. At Opus, he has led large-scale AWS modernization efforts, an enterprise-wide AI adoption program, and post-merger technology integration in a heavily regulated industry. He is the author of The Foreign Mind, which examines AI leadership through the lens of Orson Scott Card's Enderverse. Based in Tucson, Steve writes and speaks about how engineering teams move from individual heroics to repeatable, AI-assisted delivery. He has held his PMP certification since 2004.
by Steve Harlow
A blameless draft postmortem where every timeline entry cites its log, alert, or message, and every action item traces to a cause.
by Steve Harlow
Turn strategic priorities, prior-year results, and board guidance into a reconciled annual operating plan with owners, scorecards, and contingencies.
by Steve Harlow
Turn org charts and talent assessments into scored critical roles, readiness-tiered successor pipelines, and emergency succession protocols.
by Steve Harlow
Turn an approved strategic plan into one core narrative and consistent versions for employees, investors, customers, and partners.
by Steve Harlow
Draft board and committee charters, board packages, minutes, and a governance calendar from your own governance facts, ready for counsel review.
by Steve Harlow
Build a crisis playbook from your real risks and people: severity levels, decision rights, holding statements, and stakeholder templates.
by Steve Harlow
Turn an org chart, a problem list, and a strategy into structural options, a recommended design, and a 90-day transition plan.
by Steve Harlow
Turn company context and open strategic questions into explicit choices, trade-offs, 3-5 owned priorities, and an offsite plan.
by Steve Harlow
Turn your executive pay data and benchmark sources into a comp philosophy, salary bands, equity guidelines, and an internal equity review.
by Steve Harlow
Combine financial, legal, commercial, technical, and HR diligence findings into one investment committee decision package.
by Steve Harlow
Turn meeting notes or an email thread into a tiered, audit-ready record of what was decided, by whom, why, and what was rejected.
by Steve Harlow
Long report, policy, or contract in; an executive summary, key points, and implications for your role out, with section references.
by Steve Harlow
Many sources in; one brief showing themes, where sources agree, where they conflict, and what none of them answer.
by Steve Harlow
Describe a process and what has gone wrong; get a pass/fail QC checklist where every check traces to a real failure.
by Steve Harlow
Messy CSV or spreadsheet paste in; an analysis-ready table plus a log of every transformation made.