📄 75 — Pre‑Mortem Analysis
Definition
Imagining that a project has failed and working backward to identify the causes.
When to Use
• Project planning • Risk management • Strategic decisions • Complex initiatives
How It Improves Reasoning
It reveals failure modes before they occur and encourages proactive mitigation.
Steps
- Assume the project has failed.
- List possible reasons.
- Prioritize by likelihood and impact.
- Mitigate proactively.
Example
Before launching a product, the team imagines it flopped and identifies why.
Prompts
• “Conduct a pre‑mortem for this project.” • “List reasons this initiative might fail.”