Pre-mortem

A Pre-mortem, popularized by psychologist Gary Klein, is a technique where you imagine that a project or decision has already failed — and then work backward to figure out why. Unlike a post-mortem (which happens after failure), a pre-mortem happens before you start, giving you a chance to prevent failure.

1. Describe the plan — Lay out the project, decision, or initiative you're about to pursue.
2. Imagine total failure — Fast-forward in time and assume the project has failed spectacularly. Don't hold back.
3. Generate reasons for failure — Each team member independently writes down all the reasons why the project failed. Be specific and creative.
4. Share and consolidate — Go around the room and collect all failure reasons. Group similar ones together.
5. Prioritize the risks — Which failure modes are most likely? Which would be most damaging?
6. Create preventive actions — For each top risk, define specific actions to prevent or mitigate it.
7. Update your plan — Incorporate these preventive actions into the project plan.

• We didn't test with real users before launching
• The engineering team was pulled onto a hotfix mid-sprint
• We underestimated the complexity of the third-party integration
• Customer support wasn't trained on the new flow
• We didn't set up analytics to measure conversion

• Schedule user testing in week 2
• Ring-fence engineering capacity with leadership buy-in
• Spike the integration this week to uncover unknowns
• Book CS training session before launch
• Set up analytics dashboard in parallel

The Pre-mortem gives you permission to voice concerns that might otherwise go unsaid. By imagining failure upfront, you surface risks early when they're still cheap to address.