A pre-mortem is a proactive risk management exercise that helps teams anticipate potential failures before they occur. Unlike traditional risk assessments, which often focus on known risks, a pre-mortem encourages teams to imagine a scenario where the initiative has already failed and work backward to identify the causes. This method:

• Uncovers hidden risks that might otherwise be overlooked.
• Encourages open and candid discussions within teams.
• Enhances risk mitigation strategies early in the process.
• Strengthens team alignment and shared accountability for success.

What Are the Outcomes of a Pre-Mortem?

When executed effectively, a pre-mortem delivers several valuable outcomes:

• A comprehensive list of potential failure points.
• A prioritized risk register with mitigation actions.
• Stronger team cohesion and ownership over the initiative’s success.
• Improved decision-making, ensuring proactive rather than reactive responses to risks.

How to Execute a Pre-Mortem

Follow these structured steps to conduct an effective pre-mortem:

1. Set the Stage: Gather the key stakeholders, including project sponsors, team leads, and operational experts. Ensure a psychologically safe environment where candid discussions are encouraged.
2. Define the Scenario: Present the hypothetical situation: “It is six months (or an appropriate timeframe) in the future, and the project has completely failed. What went wrong?”
3. Brainstorm Failure Points: Each participant individually lists reasons for failure, considering strategic, operational, and technical factors.
4. Share and Categorize: Consolidate and group similar failure points into themes (e.g., governance issues, resource constraints, external disruptions).
5. Prioritize Risks: Use voting, ranking, or a risk assessment matrix to determine which failure points are the most critical.
6. Develop Mitigation Actions: For each high-priority risk, define preventive measures and contingency plans.
7. Integrate into Governance: Assign ownership for risk monitoring and integrate these insights into ongoing project reviews.

When and With Whom Should You Conduct a Pre-Mortem?

• When: Ideally, before finalizing the transformation strategy or at key milestones in major initiatives (e.g., post-planning, before execution phases, during major pivots).
• With Whom: A cross-functional group including executives, project managers, functional leads, risk officers, and frontline implementers.

By embedding the pre-mortem approach into your transformation governance, you significantly improve the likelihood of success by proactively identifying and addressing risks before they materialize.

This technique not only improves project outcomes but also builds stronger teams through enhanced communication and psychological safety.