Thinking method · Klein, Sources of Power
Premortem
Imagining the failure has already happened, so the reasons become sayable. Just before committing to something hard to undo.
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Imagining the failure has already happened, so the reasons become sayable.
The steps
- Fix a point in the future. Assume the plan failed completely.
- Write the story of how it failed. Be specific about the sequence.
- List every cause you named.
- For each, decide: prevent it, detect it early, or accept it.
- Write what the earliest visible sign of each would be.
When to use it
Just before committing to something hard to undo.
What it will not do
It surfaces failure modes you can imagine. The ones you cannot are why the bad case still needs to be survivable.
Where it comes from: Klein, Sources of Power. Described in our own words.
The module it belongs to
- Decision Thinking — Make better decisions under uncertainty