Performing a Project Premortem

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   A premortem asks the team to assume the plan has already failed and explain why, so objections surface while there is still time.

   Performing a Project Premortem · 2007

   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.

   “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.”

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