Raven over on Raven’s Brain has posted yet another great article (she seems to make a habit of that), this time about doing a Pre-Mortem of your project.
I want to try this with some projects, but I also see value in it operationally. For example, I want to try this with my development teams:
Imagine this scenario: we just released the next major version of the product. It was a spectacular failure. The business is angry. The customers are ringing the phone off the hook. We completely blew the schedule to boot. What things do you think went wrong to cause it?
I plan to open things up to suggestions as to what went wrong, write them down on the whiteboard, then we’ll have a problem-solving session on what we can do to prevent these things from happening. I am hoping to come out of it with some significant process improvements.
This is a great tool in my opinion. Post-mortems sometimes turn into blame sessions. They also bring forth observations which would have been valuable before the project was underway, but now are of less value. People also sometimes have trouble projecting what they learned forward- they see what went wrong, they resolve to ‘never do it again’, then they fail to apply what they learned to the next project, because it seems like a different situation. If you run through a pre-mortem, then when people see the problems named in the same situation that they imagined the problems, the ‘lesson learned’ will instantly applicable and easy to relate to the problem. I recommend trying this before taking on any major project or repeatable process.
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This blog is written by me, Stacey Douglas, an analyst, project manager, systems designer and executive in the software industry. You can learn more about me at my website, http://www.staceydouglas.com.
Hi Stacey! I also liked this idea and my girlfriend is kicking off a major project next week with a pre-mortem as part of the planning phase. I can imagine how this type of session would bring out those little things that always seems to pop out of no where. And your thoughts that we need this information BEFORE the project is executed is spot on. It’s great to have a lessons learned session after, but wouldn’t it have been more useful to have that info upfront? And I also agree that post mortems have become so dreaded because they have been transformed into blaming sessions and are no longer useful tools for gaining real insight. Good stuff, thanks for sharing your thoughts :)
I thinks premortem is a good tool to prevent senior staff from pushing only their own ideas.
Please provide me with literature on how to apply the premortem tool
I haven’t seen a lot of literature on this- it’s just a concept that I’ve tried, and that I’ve heard good things about from others. Raven, do you have any references on this?
I would be glad to write more on the subject. I’ll put something together in a future series!