The Premortem Planner

Before we proceed, I want you to do a "premortem" on this plan. Imagine we're 6 months in the future and this approach has completely failed. What went wrong? What assumptions did we make that turned out to be false? What edge cases did we miss? What integration issues did we overlook? What would users hate about it? Now, with that pessimistic scenario fresh in your mind, revise the plan to address the most likely failure modes.

• Before committing to a major implementation
• When planning risky or complex features
• To challenge assumptions before they become problems

• Forces consideration of failure modes upfront
• Catches integration issues before they're expensive to fix
• Especially valuable for user-facing features