Why I Run a Pre-Mortem Before Every Kickoff

Описание и применение

Пре‑мортем выявляет конкретные риски, которые обычно упускаются в планировании, и позволяет назначить ответственных и сигналы тревоги.

Задача

Planning sessions often miss concrete, actionable risks that can derail a project, especially in AI and software development.

Результат

The pre‑mortem surfaces specific, actionable failure scenarios that are often missed in traditional planning, enabling early mitigation through owners and tripwires.

Рабочий процесс

• Read the framing sentence: "It is six months from now, the project has failed badly, and we are explaining what happened."
• Five minutes of silent writing: each participant lists reasons for failure alone.
• Round‑robin readout: each person shares one reason per turn until all lists are empty.
• Group the reasons on a board and select the five that would hurt most.
• Assign an owner and a tripwire to each of the five risks before leaving the room.

Доказательства

A pre‑mortem produces sentences describing something a person actually watched happen once, named in enough detail to be plannable

Источник

The exercise has also become the first thing I bring to a new software consulting engagement, ahead of the plan

Источник