It's maybe a level of details thing. "A bad deploy went unnoticed, causing a cascading failure. We identified how that happened and have new checks in place to prevent it in the future."
Two lines, with the same information someone not very technically literate would understand from the OP. I agree with being transparent, but I also believe in not unnecessarily scaring and/or confusing customers, either.
(Pretty soon they'll just start outting individual engineers...)
The fact that you think an engineer can be "outed" is a culture problem.
The process failed the engineer. Testing, deployment, and monitoring infrastructure was not up to the task of supporting human beings. That it happened to be triggered by engineer X instead of engineer Y is entirely coincidental.
The audience of the post mortem matters. When I see the two line summary, I have no idea whether that's a CYA whitewash, or a sincere part of a process of improvement. When I see the full PM, it builds more trust.
If you're not an engineer capable of understanding the details, it may have a different effect. And if you're part of a corporate culture of politics, shaming, and status chasing, it must feel totally alien.
Two lines, with the same information someone not very technically literate would understand from the OP. I agree with being transparent, but I also believe in not unnecessarily scaring and/or confusing customers, either.
(Pretty soon they'll just start outting individual engineers...)