A story about blameless post-mortems

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Abby Allen
5 min readAug 13, 2020
The first page of the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
image credit: Lois Ehlert

A told B and B told C, ‘I’ll meet you at the top of the coconut tree. “Whee!” said D to E F G, “I’ll beat you to the top of the coconut tree.” Chicka chicka boom boom! Will there be enough room?

You just launched a Hot new product or feature. People are Interested, and you Just got a call from Kyle in Legal. A digital Media News Outlet wants to Publish a story, and Kyle wants to make sure you’re Qualified to take the interview. Your marketing team just Released a stellar Strategy and it’s Taking off like a rocket. Usage is up and the team is feeling Victorious.

Still more — W! and X Y Z! The whole alphabet up the — Oh, no! Chicka Chicka… BOOM! BOOM!

Your servers can’t handle the load. Pagers are going off everywhere. Customer success is rattled, the executives want to know when the system will be back online, and finance is counting every penny of lost revenue while you get the incident under control. How will you and your team react?

Here’s a few tips from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a children’s book by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert.

Skit skat skoodle doot. Flip flop flee.

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Abby Allen
Abby Allen

Written by Abby Allen

Abby Allen is a user-focused product manager, engineer, entrepreneur, and mom based in Minneapolis, MN.

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