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Pre-mortem template
For a team about to commit to a plan that wants the doubts in the room before the money is spent. It follows Gary Klein’s premortem: everyone assumes the decision has already failed and writes down why.
When to use this template
- The plan is agreed in principle but not yet committed, so a finding can still change it.
- The team is confident, senior people favor the plan, and quieter doubts may not surface on their own.
- Failure would be expensive or slow to reverse: a launch, a migration, an acquisition, a key hire.
- You want risks tied to warning signs and owners, not a list that nobody checks again.
The 10 fields
- Reason ID
- A reference for one failure reason, such as R-03. One row per reason.
- Decision
- The plan being tested, in one sentence. Repeat it on each row so every row stands alone.
- Imagined failure
- What failure looks like a year from now, stated concretely: a number missed, a customer lost, a date slipped.
- Failure reason
- One plausible reason it failed, written independently before anyone shares.
- Rank
- Where the reason sits by likelihood and damage once every reason is pooled.
- Early warning sign
- The first observable signal that this reason is starting to happen.
- Mitigation
- What changes in the plan now, or what you will do if the warning sign appears.
- Owner
- The person who watches the warning sign and acts on it.
- Check date
- When the owner checks for the sign and reports back.
- Result at check
- What the owner found: no sign, sign seen and handled, or failure under way.
How to use it
- 1
Brief the plan, then declare it failed
Present the decision in a few minutes. Then say: it is a year from now, we went ahead, and it failed. Klein’s method asks people to assume the failure, not to guess whether it might happen.
- 2
Write reasons alone first
Give everyone a few minutes to write reasons independently. Silent writing keeps the first confident voice from setting the list.
- 3
Pool, then rank
Go around the room, one reason per person per turn, until the lists are empty. Rank the reasons by likelihood and damage, and keep the top few.
- 4
Give each top reason a sign and an owner
For each ranked reason, name the earliest warning sign, the mitigation, the owner, and the check date. A risk without an owner is only a worry.
Illustrative example: the top-ranked reason from a pre-mortem at Calder Outdoor, an invented retailer
- Decision
- Move all online orders to a single third-party fulfillment center by March 1.
- Imagined failure
- It is next February. Delivery complaints have doubled, and we are paying for two warehouses.
- Failure reason
- The fulfillment center could not handle oversized items, so we kept the old warehouse running for tents and kayaks.
- Rank
- 1 of 11
- Early warning sign
- More than 2% of orders in the January trial need manual handling.
- Mitigation
- Add 200 oversized orders to the January trial, and keep the old lease on a three-month break clause.
- Owner
- Head of logistics
- Check date
- 2025-01-31