PreMortem

Method of Risk Assessment

Jack Kruf | December 2007

According to Klein (2007), “Projects fail at a spectacular rate. One reason is that too many people are reluctant to speak up about their reservations during the all-important planning phase. By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledgeable about the undertaking and worried about its weaknesses to speak up, you can improve a project’s chances of success.”

The Harvard Business Review article: “In a premortem, team members assume that the project they are planning has just failed—as so many do—and then generate plausible reasons for its demise. Those with reservations may speak freely at the outset, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied.”

According to Gary Klein on his own website: “This method has been used widely in the business and management domains. A premortem is an exercise that typically begins after a team has been briefed on a plan. The team leader will ask his or her team to imagine that the proposed plan has failed. As a team, everyone contributes to an exercise where potential threats and hurdles to the plan are generated. The goal of the PreMortem Method of Risk Assessment is to increase plan success rate.”

Added in December 2017

In fact the premortem is a debiasing technique, well explained here by Daniel Kahneman. • In feite is de premortem een debiasing techniek, hier goed uitgelegd door Daniel Kahneman.

Bibliography

Klein, G. (2007) Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review, September issue

Read also

Mitchell, D., Russo, J., & Pennington, N. (1989) Back to the Future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Vol. 2, 25-38