# Pre-mortem

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{{Short description|Project strategy to lower risk by assuming failure and brainstorming possible causes}}
A '''pre-mortem''', or '''premortem''', is a [managerial strategy](/source/Management) in which a project team imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project or organization.<ref name="hbr">{{cite journal |author=Klein, G. |title=Performing a Project Premortem |journal=Harvard Business Review |volume=85 |issue=9 |pages=18–19 |year=2007|url=https://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Kahneman, D. |author-link=Daniel Kahneman |title=Thinking, Fast and Slow |url=https://archive.org/details/thinkingfastslow0000kahn|url-access=registration|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2011 |isbn=978-0374275631}}</ref>

The technique breaks possible [groupthink](/source/groupthink)ing by facilitating a positive discussion on threats, increasing the likelihood the main threats are identified. Management can then reduce the chances of failure due to [heuristics](/source/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_decision-making) and [biases](/source/cognitive_bias) such as [overconfidence](/source/overconfidence_effect) and [planning fallacy](/source/planning_fallacy) by analyzing the magnitude and likelihood of each threat, and take preventive actions to protect the project or organization from suffering an untimely "death". It formalizes and expands on the acknowledgedly much older concept of prospective hindsight (Mitchell, Russo, and Pennington 1989) in which participants "look back from the future" to identify problems before they occur.

According to a [Harvard Business Review](/source/Harvard_Business_Review) article from 2007, "unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what ''might'' go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the 'patient' has died, and so asks what ''did'' go wrong."<ref name="hbr" />

The pre-mortem analysis seeks to identify threats and weaknesses via the hypothetical presumption of near-future failure. But if that presumption is incorrect, then the analysis may be identifying threats/weaknesses that are not in fact real.

== See also ==
* [Kickoff meeting](/source/Kickoff_meeting)
* [Postmortem documentation](/source/Postmortem_documentation)
* [Worst-case scenario](/source/Worst-case_scenario)

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

Category:Business analysis
Category:Project management
Category:Risk management

{{Business-stub}}

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