premortems
Preemptive failure analysis
A premortem is a risk-assessment exercise conducted before a project begins, where participants imagine the project has already failed and work backward to identify what went wrong.
The term plays on postmortem, the medical examination after death.
Rather than analyzing actual failure, a premortem surfaces potential problems while there's still time to prevent them: We ran a premortem on the product launch and caught three major blind spots.
Acting before problems arise
- preventiveMeant to stop trouble
- prudentExercising sound judgment
- cautiousCareful to avoid risk
- circumspectCarefully considering consequences
Ability to anticipate futures
- predictionForecast of coming events
- forecastingEstimating future conditions
- prognosticationForetelling future events
- forethoughtPlanning before acting
vigilance · early-warning · precursor · signal · trigger · cascade · knock-on · spillover
Fundamental origin of problem
- diagnosisIdentification of illness
- evaluationDetermining worth or quality
- blindspotZone beyond perception
- vulnerabilityOpenness to harm
weakness · bottleneck · dependency · worst-case · showstopper · dealbreaker · flaw
Removing systematic distortion
- overconfidenceUnjustified certainty in oneself
- groupthinkConformity-driven poor decisions
- anchoringFastening securely to position
- assumptionUnverified belief accepted as true
Alternative if primary fails
- safeguardPrecaution against harm
- bufferProtective intermediate space
- redundancyNeedless duplication
- fail-safeAutomatic harm prevention mechanism
proactive
Acting before problems arise
- preventiveMeant to stop trouble
- prudentExercising sound judgment
- cautiousCareful to avoid risk
foresight
Ability to anticipate futures
- predictionForecast of coming events
- forecastingEstimating future conditions
- prognosticationForetelling future events
forethought · vigilance · early-warning · precursor · signal · trigger · cascade · knock-on · spillover
root-cause
Fundamental origin of problem
- diagnosisIdentification of illness
- evaluationDetermining worth or quality
- blindspotZone beyond perception
vulnerability · weakness · bottleneck · dependency · worst-case · showstopper · dealbreaker · flaw
debiasing
Removing systematic distortion
- overconfidenceUnjustified certainty in oneself
- groupthinkConformity-driven poor decisions
- anchoringFastening securely to position
fallback
Alternative if primary fails
- safeguardPrecaution against harm
- bufferProtective intermediate space
- redundancyNeedless duplication
fail-safe · circuit-breaker · rollback · milestone · checkpoint
premortemspostmortems
Examinations of corpses
post-mortems · retrospectives · debriefs · autopsies · lessons learned