The pre-mortem
Before committing to a plan, assume it has failed and ask the team to write down why. This legitimises dissent and brings out the risks that optimism was suppressing, at far lower cost than the postmortem it prevents.
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
The start of any significant initiative, especially where enthusiasm is high and disagreement has been quiet.
Where it stops working
It produces candour only where safety already exists. In a low-trust room it produces the same silence as every other meeting.
Where the standard uses it
- DE-4Managing scope, risk, and dependencies across workstreamsSeeing the whole, naming the risk, negotiating the boundary.
Sources
- Gary Klein. Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review, September 2007, 2007. In the bibliography
Used alongside it
- Contract at the boundary practice
- Conway's law practice
- Ground truth and status criteria practice
- One-way and two-way doors practice
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). The pre-mortem. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.pre-mortem). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/pre-mortem