🛠️ Pre-mortem prompt

💡 Use Case

• I describe a plan in ten lines and ask for twenty ways it fails, written as if the failure had already happened. Then I close the window and write my own five.
• The twenty are there to be disagreed with. The five are the ones I will act on. It is the first half of 🧭 Pre-mortem, done by something that does not mind sounding gloomy.
• First used on Monday 10 February, two days before the go or no-go, with the load test already slow.

How I use it

1. Write the plan in ten plain lines: what, for whom, by when, what it depends on.
2. Ask: It is three months later and this failed. Give me twenty different reasons, most likely first, one line each.
3. Read once. Strike the ones that could not happen here.
4. Close it. Write my own five on paper.
5. For each of the five: who would see it first, and what would they see?

⚖️ Pros & Cons

Pros

• It gets the obvious fifteen out of the way in a minute, and the room I am in has usually only said four of them.
• Twenty is enough that a few are strange, and a strange one makes me think of a true one.
• Nobody's feelings are involved.

Cons

• It knows nothing about our system. On 10 February the list did not contain the test itself is too gentle, which Nadia Rahimi had said in January and which was the real one.
• A long list feels like diligence. It is not the same as having looked.

🔄 Alternatives

• A pre-mortem with the actual team, as on 10 March before the launch. Better in every way and it needs an hour of eleven people.
• Asking Priya Raman what she is worried about. Shorter list, higher hit rate.