What is a pre-mortem?
Method: A pre-mortem assumes a future plan has failed and works backward to identify plausible mechanisms. It makes risk discussion easier before commitment creates defensiveness.
Turn imagined failure into preventive action
- State the decision and a specific failed outcome.
- List failure mechanisms independently.
- Rate likelihood and impact separately.
- Attach an owner, indicator, or preventive control.
Rank mechanisms rather than vague worries
Before launching a new intake process, the team imagines that requests are delayed and abandoned. Possible mechanisms include unclear ownership, missing information, and an overloaded approval step, each requiring a different control.
Risk scores remain estimates
Write an indicator that can be observed early
A useful control changes the mechanism or detects it before the outcome becomes irreversible. Replace monitor closely with a named signal, threshold, owner, and response date. Separate prevention from detection: a capacity limit may prevent overload, while a queue-time alert only reveals that overload has started. Naming the control type exposes risks that have an alarm but no response plan.
High-scoring risks deserve immediate controls, but low-likelihood catastrophic risks may still need safeguards. Review the ranked list beside reversibility and exposure rather than relying on the product alone. After assigning a control, estimate the remaining risk instead of treating the original score as permanent. A control without an owner, trigger, and feasible action is an intention rather than a safeguard.
Boundary of the result
A pre-mortem expands risk awareness. It does not predict that every listed failure will occur.
Continue with the method
Use the pre-mortem article and the decision matrix calculator and the incident timeline builder to move from a quick result to a complete reasoning process.