Pre-Mortem Analysis

Depth · what it can open●○○○1 — informational

Holding · facilitation1 — host

Trust · group readiness★any

Disclosure · what is sharednone

Before finalizing a significant plan, the team imagines it is months later and the initiative has failed completely — then everyone writes down why. Causes are clustered and the plan modified. Prospective hindsight legitimizes doubt that politeness would otherwise silence.

Practical

Time: 20-45 min
Group: 3–20 · small-group
Settings: in-person, online
Materials: Sticky notes or shared doc
Mechanisms: perspective-taking, cognitive-reframing
Change scope: state → skill · recurring-practice (before significant plans)

Origin & where it lives

Gary Klein (pre-mortem method, applying prospective hindsight research by Mitchell, Russo & Pennington); team scaffold codification by Thomas Jordan — Decision science / naturalistic decision making

Instructions: open online

In this directory via Thomas Jordan's IDG Resource Library

status: checked · added 2026-08-25