How to run a pre-mortem and save your project from inevitable disaster
If you’ve worked in digital for any length of time you’ll almost certainly have worked on a project that’s crashed and burned (unless you’ve been incredibly lucky).
One way you can try to avoid this is by running a pre-mortem before you start.
A pre-mortem is just like a project postmortem except, as the name suggests, it takes place before you’ve even begun. You release your inner pessimist, assuming that the project has been a complete disaster and everything that could’ve gone wrong did.
By doing this you can quickly highlight the project’s biggest risks so you can start mitigating them.
So, how do you go about running a pre-mortem?
The most important thing is to get as many people in the room as possible. The more viewpoints and experiences you can involve the more likely you are to uncover a showstopper.
Once you’ve got them in the room simply ask your attendees to write post-its for every little thing they think could possibly go wrong with the project. Reassure them that no problem is too small or off limits: “What if the office catches fire?”, “What if our server goes down?”, “What if the CEO quits?” are all good questions.
Once they’re done writing, get the team to group their post-its on the wall and use dot voting to highlight the most pressing problems.
When you have your top few the team can start coming up with ways to mitigate those risks.
A premortem provides a safe space for people within your organisation to express concerns and reservations that they would normally keep to themselves. By inviting feedback before you’ve begun you can turn potential critics into future allies and make it everyone’s responsibility to ensure the project succeeds.
Want to know more? Tweet me@tomhewitson or send me an email at www.tomhewitson.com
