Pre-mortem — fail-it-before-you-build-it

A retrospective for a project that hasn't happened yet. Surfaces real risks that "list every risk" prompts miss.

Originated in Gary Klein's research at MIT Sloan, now standard at AWS and other ops-mature orgs.

The 5-step pre-mortem

Step 1. Imagine you're 6 months in the future

The project shipped. It is a clear, public failure. There's a Reddit thread about it. The CEO is asking what went wrong.

Step 2. Write the post-mortem newspaper headline

One sentence. Concrete. Specific. Examples: