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Discovery

Premortem

Anticipate potential major reasons for project failure. The premortem can be seen as "a powerful protection against wishful thinking."

Length

1 hour

Participants

Core team, relevant stakeholders

Why Do It
  • Identify in advance potential issues that could derail the project
When To Do It
  • At the beginning of a project
  • Ahead of something important event, such as a product release
How To Do It
  • Invite the right people
  • Define a scenario to analyze
  • Identify risky events
  • Generate potential mitigation actions

Step By Step

  1. Share context with the team (5 min) Explain the goal of the premortem.

    You might say something like:

    “Imagine that today is <the day of the important event> and that the project failed. What happened? What caused the project to fail?”

    Or could say:

    “Flash Forward. Imagine that the <project> is under way. Now imagine there’s been a major setback. What is it?”

    Tip: By prompting the team to imagine that they are already in that situation and that the project failure has already occurred, you might increase the team’s ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.”

    Tip: Make sure you provide psychological safety for each team member so that everyone can speak up.

  2. Brainstorming Premortem Topics (10 mins)

    Ask the team members to individually brainstorm and write on post its or digital workspace reasons why the project failed.

  3. Quick topic Clustering (5 mins)

    Ask the team to cluster the post-its based on similar topics. Remove the duplicate stickies.

  4. Pick the top priority topics to cover (5 min)

    There are several approaches you can take here:

    • Discuss all topics.
    • Pick only a few topics to discuss, by doing a prioritization activity. Prioritization options include:
      • Dot vote
      • Plot each topic on a 2x2 with axes labeled: likelihood of occurrence and level of risk/how severe the consequences. Pick the ones that have highest likelihood of occurrence and most severe consequences.

  5. Discuss prioritized topics (30 mins) Allow enough time for each topic to be discussed.

    Consider “How did this happen?”

    Tip: Consider using “five whys”.

    For each of the prioritized topics, identify actions that can be taken in order to mitigate that issue and also agree who will own each action.

  6. Schedule the follow up (1 min)

    Agree with the team for a follow up premortem session to review the actions.

    Tip: After considering potential major setbacks, you could also prompt people to imagine that “this time there’s been some sort of pleasant surprise. What is it?”. This optimistic scenario will help the team also prepare to recognize opportunities and find solutions that are creative.

Result
A clear alignment of what are some of the potential major issues that might prevent them from achieving what they’ve set to. Moreover, the team will have a set of plans to prevent or reduce the likelihood of that issue occurring.