pre-mortem
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:
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