Preparation
01 · Select the project or plan
- Choose a project, initiative, or decision that is already substantially defined but not yet launched.
- The more concrete the plan, the richer the pre-mortem.
02 · Brief participants
- Ensure everyone understands the project's goals, timeline, and key assumptions.
- Share any relevant background documents in advance if the project is complex.
03 · Prepare materials
- Sticky notes or cards for individual idea generation.
- A wall or board for clustering failure causes by theme.
- Optional: a "failure story" template to guide the narrative.
Step-by-step instructions
1
Set the scene (3–5 min)
- Facilitator says: "Imagine it is 12 months from now [or a relevant future date]. Our project has failed. Completely. It did not achieve its goals, and it ended worse than we expected."
- Ask participants to fully inhabit this future failure scenario — not to hope it won't happen, but to genuinely believe it has.
2
Individual writing (5–10 min)
- Each participant writes down, silently and independently, all the reasons they can think of that explain why the project failed.
- Encourage quantity and honesty — no idea is too obvious or too uncomfortable to write down.
3
Round-robin sharing (15–20 min)
- Go around the room with each person sharing one cause at a time until all causes are on the table.
- No criticism or debate during this phase — just list everything.
- Facilitator clusters similar causes on the wall or board as they emerge.
4
Prioritization and analysis (10–15 min)
- Review the full list of failure causes together.
- Identify which risks are most likely, most impactful, or most within the team's control to address.
- Use dot voting or simple show of hands to prioritize the top 3–5 risks.
5
Prevention planning (10–15 min)
- For each top risk, ask: "What can we do now to prevent this or reduce its impact?"
- Assign responsibility and define concrete actions for each identified risk.
Materials
Sticky notes or index cards for individual writing
Wall or board for clustering causes
Markers
Dot stickers for prioritization voting (optional)
Shared document or template to capture action items
Digital tools
Platforms
For virtual sessions or collaborative documentation.
Practical recommendations
Protect psychological safety
Make explicit that no cause is wrong or offensive — the goal is comprehensive identification, not blame.
Include skeptics deliberately
Invite the team member who has expressed most doubts about the project — their concerns are the richest input.
Don't stop at identification
A pre-mortem that only lists risks without defining mitigations is half-finished. Always close with concrete actions.
Use it for decisions, not just projects
Pre-mortem works equally well for evaluating a strategic choice — "Imagine we made this decision and it backfired. Why?"
Repeat at key milestones
A pre-mortem at project launch and another at mid-point catches different sets of risks as context evolves.
Inspiration
Application examples by context:
- Product launch: Before going to market, the team imagines the product flopped — identifying overlooked user needs, weak distribution channels, or underestimated competitors.
- Community initiative: Before launching a neighborhood program, the organizing team surfaces assumptions about participation, funding dependencies, and local resistance.
- Education: Before starting a semester-long project with students, teachers and students together identify what could make it fail — building shared ownership of the conditions for success.
- Policy design: Before publishing a new regulation, the design team imagines it was widely rejected or misimplemented — catching communication, enforcement, and equity blind spots in advance.
