Pre‑mortem Checklist — Reduce surprise before you decide

A pre-mortem helps teams surface risks and test assumptions before committing. Use this checklist in a short 20–45 minute session before rolling out significant decisions.

1. Set the scene (2 minutes) — State the decision and the intended outcome. Timebox the exercise.
2. Imagine failure (5 minutes) — Invite participants to silently write down reasons the decision might fail.
3. Share and cluster (8–10 minutes) — Each person reads one reason at a time. Cluster similar failure modes on a board or virtual canvas.
4. Ask 'what would cause this?' — For each cluster, identify the assumptions or causes that would lead to the failure.
5. Prioritize (5 minutes) — Use a quick vote to pick the top 2–3 failure modes by impact and likelihood.
6. Create defenses or experiments (5–10 minutes) — For each top failure, define a mitigation, a small experiment, or an early warning metric.
7. Record outcomes — Add the mitigations, owners, and metrics to the Decision Record and schedule follow-ups.

Facilitator tips

• Encourage blunt candor but keep the tone constructive: the goal is learning, not blame.
• Use silent generation to avoid anchoring and to get more independent ideas.
• Keep artifacts compact: one board and one prioritized list of mitigations is enough.