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Blameless by design: active and passive voice in a blameless postmortem

Choose between the active and passive voice in this B2 English for IT lesson plan on blameless postmortems.

Grammar
The past passive (The change was rolled back.), had been + past participle, the active with a system as subject (The pipeline kicked off the deploy.) and incident phrasal verbs.
Topic
An incident report on duplicate payout notifications at a fictional payments startup, rewritten without blame, with words such as culprit, hindsight bias and contributing factor.
Activities
The story of blameless postmortems, a first draft full of blame, a call that rewrites it, drills that check themselves, an incident-channel chat, open boxes, a report to rewrite and a talk to record.

What's inside

  1. Chapter 1Warm-up: When Things Break

    • PictureUnlock
    • Spin the wheel and talk about mistakes at workSpin the wheelUnlock
    • Study the incident vocabularyVocabularyTry it
    • Choose the word for each pictureChoose by pictureUnlock

  2. Chapter 2The Story: Causes, Not Culprits

    • Read the story of blameless postmortemsArticleUnlock
    • Choose the correct answer about the storyQuizUnlock

  3. Chapter 3At Work: Postmortem, Draft 1

    • Read Fatima's postmortem draft and the commentsReal-life documentTry it
    • True or false? Check the draft and the commentsTrue or falseUnlock
    • Sort the sentences into blame and no blameSort into columnsUnlock

  4. Chapter 4Listen: A List of Suspects

    • Listen to Fatima and Tom edit the draftListeningTry it
    • Transcript, for the teacherUnlock
    • Choose the correct answer about the callQuizUnlock

  5. Chapter 5Grammar: Name the Step, Not the Person

    • Study the scheme: past passive or activeGrammar schemeTry it
    • Choose the correct form of the verbChoose the optionTry it
    • Rewrite each sentence in the passive: fill in the gapsFill in the gapsUnlock
    • Choose active or passive: the final timelineChoose the optionUnlock
    • Choose the blameless and correct versionQuizUnlock
    • Fill in the gaps with the phrasal verbs in the pastFill in the gapsUnlock

  6. Chapter 6Speak Up: Cool Heads in the Incident Channel

    • Choose the best replies in the incident channelChatTry it
    • Open a box: say it without blameOpen the boxUnlock

  7. Chapter 7Homework: Rewrite It Blamelessly

    • Read your phrase bankReal-life documentUnlock
    • Choose the correct option: Fatima's message to merchantsChoose the optionUnlock
    • Match the sentence halvesMatchUnlock
    • Write a blameless version of an incident reportWriting, checked by the teacherUnlock
    • Record a talk: how your team talks about mistakesSpeaking, checked by the teacherUnlock

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Incident vocabulary

12 words and phrases from the lesson, each with a picture and audio in edio.

+9 more with pictures and audio in the lessonMore words

  • a second story
  • a just culture
  • accountability
  • hindsight bias
  • a contributing factor
  • a duplicate notification
  • spin up
  • take down
  • kick off

Grammar: active vs passive voice in a postmortem

A postmortem has to say what happened without hunting for a culprit, and the choice between the active and passive voice does much of that work. Rewriting a first draft full of blame, learners name the system or the step, not the person, use the past passive where the doer doesn't matter and put incident phrasal verbs into both voices.

Past passive or active: telling an incident fairly

In a blameless report, the subject is a system, a step or the thing that changed, not a person to blame.

The past passive and had been

The past passive is was or were + past participle: The retry timeout was shortened to five seconds. For an action before another past moment, use had been: Merchants were sure that they had been paid twice. Add by + the doer only when the doer is new and important.

FormPatternExample
Past passivewas / were + past participleThe retry timeout was shortened to five seconds.
Negativewasn't / weren't + past participleThe alert wasn't routed to the on-call engineer.
Past perfect passivehad been + past participle: earlier than another past momentMerchants were sure that they had been paid twice.
Phrasal verb, passivewas / were + past participle + particleThe change was rolled back at 11:32.
Passive + byby + the doer, only when the doer is new and importantThe post was written by John Allspaw.
Active, system as subjecta system or a step + past simpleThe notification service retried every notification.

Which voice sounds fair?

The doer decides. A system or a step takes the active: The deploy script removed the flag. An unknown or unimportant doer takes the passive. A name plus a blame verb is never fair: Wes forgot to check the push provider finds a culprit, not a cause.

Which one sounds fair?

ChooseWhenExample
the active, with a system as the subjecta system or a step did itThe deploy script removed the flag.
the passivethe doer is unknown or doesn't matterThe alert was sent to an old channel.
the active, with a rolesomeone took a step to fix itThe on-call engineer rolled back the change.
✗ a name + a blame verbnever: it finds a culprit, not a cause✗ Wes forgot to check the push provider.

From blame to blameless

First story: blames a person

  • Wes forgot to check the push provider.
  • The QA team failed to test the change.
  • The on-call engineer should have noticed sooner.
  • People need to be more careful.

Second story: describes the system

  • Response times weren't on the deploy checklist.
  • The test plan had no case for a slow push provider.
  • The alert didn't reach the on-call engineer.
  • Action item: add response times to the checklist.

When the passive hides too much

The passive isn't automatically blameless. Every notification was sent again names no person, but it also hides the system that did it: The notification service retried every notification. And by someone adds nothing except a hint of accusation.

When the passive hides too much

Use the passive when the doer is unknown or doesn't matter: The alert was routed to an old channel. But when a system did it, the passive hides too much. ✗ Every notification was sent again. ✓ The notification service retried every notification. And never add “by someone”: it says nothing new and sounds like an accusation.

Incident phrasal verbs

Roll back, bring down, take down, spin up and kick off work in both voices: A slow query brought down the refund screen. A test environment was spun up. A pronoun goes between the verb and the particle: roll it back. The nouns are one word: a rollback, a kickoff.

  • roll back: undo a release or a change → The change was rolled back at 11:32.
  • bring down: make a service stop working, usually by accident → A slow query brought down the refund screen.
  • take down: make a service go offline, on purpose or by accident → The search box was taken down.
  • spin up: create and start a new server or environment → A test environment was spun up.
  • kick off: start a process or a meeting → The pipeline kicked off the deploy.
  • A noun can go after the particle or before it (roll back the change / roll the change back); a pronoun goes before it: roll it back.
  • The nouns are one word: a rollback, a kickoff.

Typical mistakes

  • The flag was remove during the deploy.

    The flag was removed during the deploy.

    was / were + past participle, never the base form

  • The change was rolled back by someone at 11:32.

    The change was rolled back at 11:32.

    “by someone” adds nothing and sounds like an accusation

  • The release had been rollbacked.

    The release had been rolled back.

    the verb is roll back (rolled back); a rollback is the noun

  • Diego failed to see the alert.

    The alert didn't reach the on-call engineer.

    no blame verbs: forgot, failed to, should have

From today's lesson

  • At Etsy, nobody was punished for a mistake that led to an outage.
  • The engineers involved were asked for a detailed account.
  • Many merchants were sure that they had been paid twice.
  • The change had only been tested on staging.
  • The deploy pipeline kicked off the config change at 10:32.
  • Taking the notification service down was discussed first.

More lessons on this grammar: Passive voice lessons and exercises

Try the active and passive voice exercises

Try them yourself: these are the same exercises your students do in edio.

More exercises

What's in the lesson

  • 13 auto-checked exercises
  • 2 games
  • 2 teacher-checked tasks
  • 2 real-life documents
  • 1 article
  • 1 grammar scheme
  • 1 set of word cards
  • 1 audio clip
  • 1 picture
  • 1 transcript

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

  • say what happened with the past passive and had been: The change was rolled back at 11:32. The change had only been tested on staging.
  • choose the active with a system as the subject when a system did it: The notification service retried every notification.
  • use incident phrasal verbs in both voices: roll back, bring down, take down, spin up, kick off
  • rewrite a postmortem line without blame and answer an angry colleague in an incident channel: For the report, what changed matters more than who.

Lesson 8 sits in the middle of unit 3 of English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code, Incidents and postmortems, which aims at an incident account that runs in order and blames no one. It follows lesson 7's narrative tenses and builds on the present and past passive from English for IT B1, lesson 14; lesson 9 then runs a live outage call and adds the third conditional. In a postmortem, the subject of each sentence decides who looks guilty.

Students spin a wheel of questions about mistakes at work, study twelve words, from culprit to kick off, with pictures and audio, and do a picture quiz. The story explains John Allspaw's 2012 post on blameless postmortems at Etsy: people who fear blame hold back details. At work, students read a first postmortem draft full of blame, with five colleagues' comments, and sort sentences into blame and no blame. In an AI-voiced call, the on-call lead helps the author rewrite it.

Next come five drills that mark themselves, from choosing the right passive form to a final timeline in active or passive and phrasal verbs in the past. In a chat, students keep a cool head with an angry developer who wants a name; open boxes then hand them blaming lines to rephrase fairly. Homework adds a phrase bank, a drill on a message to merchants and sentence halves, then a blameless rewrite of an incident report and a recorded talk, which the teacher reviews.

Grammar:
past passive vs active · incident phrasal verbs
Topic:
incidents · postmortems · blameless culture

Teaching tips

  • Put the draft's blame verbs on the board: forgot, failed to, should have. Pairs rewrite each line around a system or a step, then compare their versions with the comments under the draft.
  • Play the call twice, for edits and then grammar: first students list the lines Tom wants changed, then they note each passive and each active with a system as the subject.
  • Turn the chat into a role-play for company teams: one learner plays the angry developer from another team, the other stays calm and blameless, with the chat's right replies as a model.
  • One-to-one, start from the learner's own last incident: they tell it once as the first story, then again as the second story, with a system or a step as each sentence's subject.

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The whole course: English for IT B2 · Beyond the Code

24 lessons at B2 for software teams, in American English. A year on at Kestrel Cloud, a fictional payments startup, Iryna and her team estimate work, write docs and postmortems, argue trade-offs, give demos and negotiate scope. Each lesson starts from a real case, from the Apollo 11 alarms to Conway's law.See the course

  1. Unit 1 Planning and estimates

    estimates and deadlines: approximating numbers, the future continuous and perfect, likelihood

    1. Lesson 1It always takes longerApproximating numbers in estimates
    2. Lesson 2By New Year's Eve, we'll have fixed itFuture continuous and future perfect
    3. Lesson 3Let's play planning pokerLikelihood with bound to, likely to and may well

  2. Unit 2 Docs people read

    specs and design docs: modals for requirements, participle clauses, plain English

    1. Lesson 4MUST, SHOULD or MAY?Modal verbs for requirements in specs
    2. Lesson 5Four kinds of docsParticiple clauses in documentation
    3. Lesson 6Just a request for commentsPlain English for design docs

  3. Unit 3 Incidents and postmortems

    telling an incident without blame: narrative tenses, the passive, the third conditional

    1. Lesson 7The 1202 alarmNarrative tenses for incident stories
    2. Lesson 8 · you're hereBlameless by designActive vs passive voice in a postmortem
    3. Lesson 9If we had had an alert…The third conditional: a different past

  4. Unit 4 Architecture and trade-offs

    comparing options and recording decisions: contrast linkers, modals of deduction, mixed conditionals

    1. Lesson 10Your system copies your org chartContrast linkers for comparing options
    2. Lesson 11It's always DNSModals of deduction for troubleshooting
    3. Lesson 12Write down the whyMixed conditionals for looking back on decisions

  5. Unit 5 Demos and tech talks

    a clear structure on stage: signposting, cleft sentences, describing trends

    1. Lesson 13The mother of all demosSignposting language for demos
    2. Lesson 1420 slides, 15 secondsCleft sentences for emphasis
    3. Lesson 15Numbers that tell a storyDescribing graphs and trends

  6. Unit 6 Stakeholders and scope

    saying no and finding yes: diplomatic language, as long as and unless, negotiating

    1. Lesson 16Pay down the debtDiplomatic language for hard messages
    2. Lesson 17Why meetings argue about the bike shedAs long as, provided, unless and otherwise
    3. Lesson 18Yes, if…Negotiating language for scope and deadlines

  7. Unit 7 AI, security and ethics

    AI tools, passwords and team rules: be used to and get used to, past modals of deduction, purpose linkers

    1. Lesson 19Your new pair programmerUsed to, be used to and get used to
    2. Lesson 20Change your password? Maybe notPast modals of deduction
    3. Lesson 21Rules for AI at workPurpose linkers for rules with a reason

  8. Unit 8 Growing your career

    feedback, retros and goals: phrasal verbs, reporting verbs, wish and if only

    1. Lesson 22Your next levelCareer phrasal verbs and goal frames
    2. Lesson 23Feedback that helpsReporting verbs and their patterns
    3. Lesson 24Start, stop, continueWish and if only for wishes and regrets

Questions about this lesson

What's the difference between active and passive voice?
In the active voice, the subject acts, while a passive subject receives the action. The on-call engineer rolled back the change is active; The change was rolled back is passive, built with was or were + past participle. The active says who acted. The passive puts what happened first and can leave the doer out, which helps when the doer doesn't matter and hides too much when it does.
How do you form the past passive?
Use was or were + the past participle: The retry timeout was shortened to five seconds. The negative is wasn't or weren't: The alert wasn't routed to the on-call engineer. For an action before another past moment, use had been: Merchants were sure that they had been paid twice. Phrasal verbs keep their particle: The change was rolled back at 11:32.
When should you use the passive voice?
Use the passive when the doer is unknown or doesn't matter: The alert was routed to an old channel. Nobody remembers who set that channel up, and knowing wouldn't change anything. When a system did the action, though, the passive hides too much, so name the system in the active: The notification service retried every notification, not Every notification was sent again.
When do you add "by" + the doer to a passive sentence?
Add by + the doer only when the doer is new and important to the reader. The post was written by John Allspaw needs the name; most incident sentences don't. By someone is the worst choice: The change was rolled back by someone at 11:32 adds nothing and sounds like an accusation. Write The change was rolled back at 11:32, or name the role: The on-call engineer rolled back the change.
Is it "was spun up" or "was spinned up"?
It's was spun up, because spin is irregular: spin, spun, spun. A test environment was spun up the next morning. Other incident verbs follow their own forms in the passive: was taken down, never was took down; was brought down; was rolled back, never was rollbacked. In Blameless by design, a B2 English for IT lesson on edio.ai, a drill offers spinned as a trap.
What does "roll back" mean?
To roll back is to undo a release or a change by going back to the previous version. In an incident timeline, it often appears in the passive: The change was rolled back at 11:32. The noun is one word, a rollback, and the past form is rolled back, never rollbacked. A pronoun goes in the middle: roll it back. The chat in Blameless by design on edio.ai offers rollbacked as a wrong reply.
What is a blameless postmortem?
A blameless postmortem is an incident review that looks for causes, not culprits. The people involved explain what they did, what they saw and what they expected, without fear of punishment, because people who expect blame hold back details. It still asks for accountability: they help fix the causes. John Allspaw's 2012 post on Etsy's engineering blog helped bring the idea to software teams.
What should a postmortem template include?
A simple template has a summary, a timeline, contributing factors and action items. The summary says what happened and who was affected; the timeline gives times and steps, with systems or roles as subjects; contributing factors name gaps in the process, not people; each action item gets an owner. Leave out be more careful: it's a wish. The B2 lesson Blameless by design on edio.ai asks for these parts in its homework.
How do you write an incident report without blaming anyone?
Describe the system and the steps, not a person's failings. Swap blame verbs such as forgot, failed to and should have for facts: Wes forgot to check the push provider becomes Response times weren't on the deploy checklist. Use the passive when the doer doesn't matter and the active with a system as subject when one acted. Names can stay for fixes: Diego rolled back the change.
How do I teach the active and passive voice to B2 professionals?
Start with a sentence that blames a person, such as The QA team failed to test the change, and ask what it would fix. Then rewrite it two ways: as a passive (The change wasn't tested with a slow push provider) and as an active with a process as subject. Professionals can rewrite a line from their own reports. The B2 lesson Blameless by design on edio.ai sorts such sentences into blame and no blame.
What's good homework for practicing the active and passive voice?
Rewriting a report that blames people is good homework: the facts stay, but the subjects become systems, steps and roles, with the passive where the doer doesn't matter. In Blameless by design, a B2 English for IT lesson on edio.ai, two drills check themselves first; then students rewrite a short incident report without blame and record a talk on how their team discusses mistakes, both for the teacher to review.
Are there interactive active and passive voice exercises?
Yes: drop-down drills and chats that mark answers instantly fit both voices well. Without an account, this page plays four parts of Blameless by design, a B2 lesson on edio.ai: a first postmortem draft with its comments, a call in which two colleagues edit it, a drill with forms such as was rolled back and was spun up, and a chat in a tense incident channel. The other exercises are locked.
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