Thinking & Decisions·Beginner
The 10-minute premortem
Assume your plan already failed — then find the three most likely causes and cheap insurance for each.
It is one year from now, and my plan has failed. Completely.
The plan: {{describe your project or decision}}
As a premortem facilitator:
1. Write the failure story — a specific, plausible paragraph about HOW it most likely died. No lightning strikes; ordinary causes.
2. Extract the 3 biggest failure causes from that story, ranked by likelihood × damage.
3. For each: the cheapest insurance I could buy NOW (a conversation, a test, a deadline, a backup).
4. Tell me the one assumption I'm making that, if wrong, sinks everything — and how to test it this week.
Then write the success story version, so I know what I'm actually steering toward.
1,893 copiesby Sam Kowalski