Planning Ahead: Premortems > Postmortems
How to catch problems before they catch you using premortems
Hey, itโsย Irina! ๐ Welcome to another edition ofย The Caring Techie Newsletter. Today youโll learn about pre-mortems and how they can be very useful tools in ensuring projectsโ success. Enjoy!
Iโm thrilled to announce that Iโve been invited to be the keynote speaker of this yearโs LeadDev Berlin conference for tech leads and engineering managers!! My talk: โ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ต๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ด๐ต ๐๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ถ๐๐: ๐๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ถ๐๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐บ ๐๐ผ๐ ๐ต๐ฎ๐๐ฒโ. Iโll discuss how leaders need to rethink their role in the era of โbuilding less with moreโ.
So, if youโre in Berlin between 4-5 of November, and want to learn from me and other exceptional technical leaders, join us at LeadDev. Also, as a 2024 conference speaker, I have a 14% off code to share with you:ย ๐๐ฅ๐๐ก๐๐ญ๐ฑ.
In last weekโs 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 usโbut 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 exerciseโbefore 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 youโll learn:
How premortems help
Why I think premortems are fun
How to run a premortem meeting
Why projects fail (and how premortems help)
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