Planning Ahead: Premortems > Postmortems
How to catch problems before they catch you using premortems
Hey, it’s Irina! 👋 Welcome to another edition of The Caring Techie Newsletter. Today you’ll learn about pre-mortems and how they can be very useful tools in ensuring projects’ success. Enjoy!
Read time: 3 minutes
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In last week’s article, we talked about how disappointing it can be to invest time and energy into projects that fail. More than being a blow to morale—it can also hurt your career growth and be extremely costly for the organization.
If you missed the article, you can read it here:
In complex projects, failure often feels like it sneaks up on us—but in reality, many of the warning signs are there from the beginning. The challenge is recognizing them early enough to act. This is where shifting from reactive learning to proactive planning can make all the difference.
Many of us have heard about postmortems, which are part of incident management. They happen after something goes wrong, to identify issues and learn from them. I wrote about postmortems in more detail here:
But what if you could do a similar exercise—before things go wrong? This is where premortems come in. This flips the usual approach on its head. Instead of just planning for success, you brainstorm all the ways things could go wrong. It's like preparing for a rainy day.
Today you’ll learn:
How premortems help
Why I think premortems are fun
How to run a premortem meeting
Why projects fail (and how premortems help)
Many projects fail because of unmanaged risks, unrealistic expectations, or simply unforeseen events. A premortem helps you identify potential pitfalls before you hit them, giving you the chance to reduce risk and avoid nasty surprises.
Postmortems require participants to use their imagination, put a hypothetical negative hat on, and ask: "What if this fails? How can we prevent it?"
The basic premise is to imagine a future where the project has already failed—and then work backward to identify the causes. This taps into a psychological principle called prospective hindsight, which helps shift focus to realism by eliminating 2 common cognitive biases:
Optimism bias: It forces the team to identify risks they might overlook when focused on success.
Hindsight bias: It documents risks upfront, preventing the i-knew-it-all-along effect later.
Why I think premortems are fun
There are several reasons why I believe premortems are not only effective but also fun:
They increase the likelihood of project success
Being able to anticipate and proactively address roadblocks makes things run more smoothly.
The whole team is involved from the start
People feel more invested because their opinions are valued early, not just after problems arise avoiding the “well if you had asked me sooner, I could’ve told you that …” moments.
They reduce anxiety for me as a lead
Knowing we’ve prepared for the worst makes me feel more confident and at ease. It's reassuring to know that even unexpected curveballs won’t catch us off guard.
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How to run an engaging premortem meeting
Yes, a premortem requires a dedicated meeting. But this is not one of those sit-down-and-listen-to-someone-else-speak-at-you meetings. Instead, it’s an engaging session where everyone contributes actively.
Different organizations use different formats, but I like to keep things simple. Here’s the structure I recommend:
Provide context:
Start a clear description of what you’re trying to build, the project roadmap, and the feature set.
Set the stage:
Make sure everyone knows their roles within the project.
“Back to the Future” moment:
Ask the team to imagine that the project has failed spectacularly.
Brainstorm what went wrong:
Have each team member independently list all the ways things could have gone wrong. This should be done quietly to avoid groupthink.
Collect and triage the issues:
Gather everyone’s answers and assess each one based on three key factors:
Impact: How severe would the consequences be?
Likelihood: How probable is it that this will happen?
Reversibility: If it happens, can it be undone or corrected?
Discuss prevention strategies and solutions:
Discuss ways to address each issue. The goal is to come up with actionable strategies to prevent problems.
Review the project plan:
Depending on the impact, likelihood, and reversibility of the issue, consider changing the project plan to incorporate prevention strategies from the start.
Keep track of your premortems with this template
To make it easy to document and follow up on your premortem findings, here’s a free template you can use: Premortem Notion Template.
I hope this article was helpful and that you give premortems a try if you haven’t!
Until next time,
Your Caring Techie
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I love that you included a template, you rock, Irina!