The pre-mortem: An alternative method of predicting failure

Most people are familiar with the idea of a postmortem. When referring to product development, the postmortem is a review performed after a failure has occurred. The intention is to look at the failure in detail to figure out the root cause. However, you need not wait until a failure occurs. One management technique with growing popularity is the pre-mortem. The pre-mortem is performed early in the development process. The product development team mentally transports themselves into the future and presupposes that a failure has occurred. The team then runs a hypothetical postmortem using their imaginations to theorize what the causes could be. This technique can often discover potential risks in a product that might not be found with other techniques by working backwards. This technique may also be used to build out a more comprehensive fault-tree analysis.