Assume the project already failed, list the causes independently, and kill the cheap likely ones before you start — instead of brainstorming hopes. Use when you are about to launch, rewrite, migrate, or take any bet you cannot afford to only examine after it dies.
--- name: run-a-premortem category: productivity description: >- Assume the project already failed, list the causes independently, and kill the cheap likely ones before you start — instead of brainstorming hopes. Use when you are about to launch, rewrite, migrate, or take any bet you cannot afford to only examine after it dies. --- # Run a Premortem A postmortem is wisdom you paid for with an incident. A premortem is the same honesty **before** the invoice: everyone looks at the calendar, names the date it failed, and writes why. It works because it licences pessimism. In an ordinary kickoff, naming failure sounds like disloyalty. Here it is the assignment. ## Frame it as already over Thirty to forty-five minutes. The people who can actually change the plan, not a gallery of stakeholders who will only worry. The facilitator says, near enough: > It is [date after the launch]. The project failed. Not "might fail" — > it failed. Write down every reason that is true. You have seven minutes. > Do not talk yet. "Failed" needs a picture: customers left, the migration corrupted data, the launch was rolled back, the hire quit, the number did not move. Pick **one** picture so the room is not writing three different obituaries. Silent writing first. The first spoken fear anchors the room the same way the first critique comment does. Independent lists are the value.
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