Premortem

When to use it

Use it before committing real resources to a plan or launch — a product release, a big pitch, a move, a new process at work — anywhere the cost of being blindsided later is much higher than the cost of an uncomfortable hour now.

When it's the wrong tool

Skip it for small, low-stakes, reversible choices, where imagining a dramatic failure is disproportionate to what's actually at risk. It also isn't a substitute for the specific expertise a plan might need — a premortem surfaces the risks you're capable of imagining, not the ones a specialist would catch that never occur to you.

An example

A small team is about to launch a new product feature. In the premortem, they imagine it's a year later and the feature was quietly shut down. Writing backward from that failure, they list reasons: nobody explained it to existing users, it broke on the one browser their biggest customer uses, support tickets piled up because there was no documentation. None of these were on the original launch checklist. All three make it onto the plan before launch day.

How it works

1. Set the scene: it's a year from now, and the plan has failed.
2. List every reason you can think of for why it failed.
3. Sort the list by which reasons are most likely and most damaging.
4. Take the top few back to the actual plan and address them now.

The tool below is free and needs no account. Nothing you type leaves your browser unless you save it.

Prefer to train the thinking behind these instead of reaching for a tool each time? The frameworks are explained free, and one drill takes about a minute.