Premortem

---
name: premortem
description: Use for pre-mortem analysis of decisions, projects, or initiatives—solo or facilitated with a team before a launch or strategic commitment. Trigger when the user says "what could go wrong", "risk assessment", "pre-mortem this", "let's run a pre-mortem", or when evaluating risks for a plan. Three-category framework (Critical, Perceived, Undiscussed risks); team sessions end in an action plan with owners.
---

# Premortem

A pre-mortem is prospective hindsight: imagine the project or decision has failed, then work backward to why. Developed by Gary Klein and popularized by Shreyas Doshi, it surfaces risks optimism bias hides.

## When to apply this

Trigger for:
- Major product launches or feature releases
- Strategic initiatives with significant investment
- AI feature deployments (high uncertainty)
- Team reorganizations or process changes
- Any decision worth documenting in a decision log

Skip for: trivially reversible choices, daily execution decisions, routine maintenance.

Before starting, read whatever already exists — project brief, PRD, strategy doc, launch plan. Don't make the user re-explain what's documented.

## The framework

### Step 1: The prompt

Ask yourself: **"If this initiative failed, what would have caused it?"**

Don't just think about it — write down at least 5 reasons.

### Step 2: Categorize the risks

| Category | What it means | How to use it |
|----------|---------------|---------------|
| **🎯 Critical Risks** | Concrete threats causing real damage if unaddressed | Require action items |
| **🔍 Perceived Risks** | Threats others may worry about; you're confident they won't materialize | Document to reassure stakeholders |
| **🔇 Undiscussed Risks** | Important concerns the team isn't openly addressing | Must be surfaced in team contexts |

### Step 3: Assess likelihood and impact

Rate each Critical and Undiscussed risk:

- **Impact**: 1 (minor) to 5 (catastrophic)
- **Likelihood**: 10% to 90% (avoid 0% or 100% certainty)

Priority score = Impact × Likelihood

### Step 4: Brainstorm mitigations

For top 3-5 risks, ask:
- **Prevent**: What would stop this from happening?
- **Detect**: How would we know early if it's starting?
- **Recover**: If it happens, how do we limit damage?

### Step 5: Decide what to accept

Not everything needs mitigation. Explicitly list what you're accepting, with rationale: "We're accepting X because Y, and will monitor Z indicator."

## Facilitating a team pre-mortem

For a group session, add the facilitation layer:

1. **Set the frame out loud first.** The psychology flips: instead of avoiding problems to be supportive, the group actively seeks problems to be helpful. State it: *we're imagining failure to prevent it, not to criticize* — everyone gets credit for identifying real risks.
2. **Pose the prompt vividly:** "Imagine this project failed spectacularly six months from now — what went wrong?"
3. **Quiet brainstorm before discussion.** 5–10 minutes of silent writing, then go around the room — stops the loudest voice anchoring the list.
4. **Use the Undiscussed category deliberately.** Creates permission to flag what the team is too polite to raise.
5. **End in an action plan, not a mood.** Every top risk gets a mitigation with a **single owner** (not "the team"), a **deadline**, and **success criteria**. A pre-mortem ending in a brainstorm with no owners is anxiety, not a pre-mortem.

Red flags to name in the room: too few Critical risks (safety problem or overconfidence), all Perceived and no Critical (avoiding real concerns), zero Undiscussed risks (the team isn't comfortable yet), everything rated maximum impact (force-rank).

## Pre-mortem for AI features

Add these AI-specific failure modes:

- **Hallucination risk**: confident-looking but wrong output
- **Refusal/over-refusal**: valid inputs rejected or too conservative
- **Prompt injection**: malicious inputs overriding behavior
- **Data leakage**: sensitive information exposed in responses
- **Cost explosion**: usage spikes beyond budget

## Pre-mortem checklist

- [ ] At least 5 failure modes identified
- [ ] Critical Risks have proposed mitigations
- [ ] Top risks have owners/timelines
- [ ] Accepted risks are intentional, not accidental
- [ ] Early warning indicators defined

## Output

Produce a concise risk register:

```markdown
# Pre-mortem: [Initiative Name]

## Critical Risks
| Risk | Impact | Likelihood | Mitigation | Owner |
|------|--------|------------|------------|-------|
| [risk] | [1-5] | [%] | [action] | [name] |

## Undiscussed Risks to Surface
- [concern the team may not be addressing]

## Early Warning Indicators
- [metric or signal to watch]

## Accepted Risks
- [what we're not mitigating and why]
```

## Integration points

- **`demo-prep`**: Feed pre-mortem risks into Pass 3
- **`decision-log`**: Capture pre-mortem insights for AI decisions tied to model versions
- **`prioritization-frameworks`**: Use likelihood scores in WSJF or Cost of Delay calculations

## Anti-patterns to avoid

- **False precision**: Don't rate likelihood as 73% when you mean "likely"
- **Everything is critical**: If all risks are 5-impact, force-rank them
- **No Undiscussed Risks in team settings**: A comfortable team surfaces unspoken concerns
- **Analysis paralysis**: More than 7 Critical Risks means over-analysis or poor scoping