“Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and so asks what did go wrong.”Gary Klein (Harvard Business Review) · Performing a Project Premortem · 2007 · Gary Klein, «Performing a Project Premortem», Harvard Business Review, septembrie 2007 (reprint F0709A), partea introductivă a articolului
You do not ask what might go wrong but why it has already failed.
The premortem uses a perspective trick that Klein calls prospective hindsight: you imagine the event has already happened. Research from 1989, cited in the article, found that this raises people's ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%. The steps are simple. The team is briefed on the plan. The leader announces that the project has failed spectacularly. For a few minutes, everyone independently writes down every reason they can think of — especially the ones they would ordinarily not mention for fear of being impolitic. Then each person in turn reads one new reason, starting with the project manager, until the lists are exhausted. Finally, the manager reviews them and strengthens the plan. The difference from a conventional risk review is social, not just logical: asking what might go wrong asks someone to oppose a plan that is still alive, whereas asking why it failed only asks them to be clever. The technique also tempers the overconfidence of people too invested in the project. It is worth doing at the start of any important plan. The traps: open discussion before individual writing, where the loudest voices win, and a list of reasons that changes nothing in the plan.
The card explains how to run a premortem. The next step is what you do with the list. A list of reasons is only raw material; value appears when each reason becomes a decision. Take every risk and ask: do we accept it, reduce it, or change the plan? For instance, if someone notes that a key supplier is often late, the plan gains a backup supplier, not just a shared worry. That is where the real difference shows: without a premortem, the risk stayed unspoken; with a premortem but no action, it stays merely spoken. A session ending in a list and no changes is just a collective confession. The question opening the next step: who decides, on your team, what is worth changing in the plan?
Passage 1 ended with the question of who decides. The answer matters more than it seems. If the manager judges the list alone, many motives die on the way: heard, then waved aside. Klein frames the premortem as an exercise run by the project leader, but its real effect appears when the leader commits to a response in advance. For instance, before the session they can say: any reason named by at least two people gets an owner and a deadline. The list then stops being a stroll through fears and becomes a contract. A premortem without a decision rule announced beforehand stays at the mercy of the boss's mood that day. Which raises another question: what do you do when the reasons voiced contradict the favored plan of the person holding the decision?
Why it matters People with reservations stay silent in the planning phase, exactly when it matters most; the premortem turns their objection from an act of opposition into a requested contribution.