Running Product Pre-mortems
Pre-mortems sit in the sweet spot between early product planning and go-to-market execution—after you have enough product context to identify real risks, but before it’s too late to address them. They’re particularly valuable for platform products where failure modes can cascade across multiple teams.
I don’t use this concept often enough, but I’m taking note of it here.
How to Run a Pre-mortem the Right Way
From: Pre-mortems: How a Stripe…
While you can organize your pre-mortem meeting just about any time, a good rule of thumb is to organize it one to three months prior to your launch. This timing gives your team sufficient context on possible Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants for your project, while building in a window to respond to potential problems that are identified during the pre-mortem.
The meeting itself is a highly-structured one hour:
- Kickoff & prompt (10 min) - Set the stage for the meeting. You’ve all been transported 3 months into the future, and your project has failed spectacularly.
- Quiet brainstorming (10 min) - Think of at least 2 Tigers and any Paper Tigers and Elephants.
- Quiet voting & group discussion (30 min) - Review and vote on threats. Go around the room and share reflections.
- Draft an action plan (10 min) - The meeting driver shares emergent top themes and next steps.
That takes care of the meeting itself. The most important part of the pre-mortem process comes after the meeting: the post pre-mortem action plan. If you are the meeting leader, you now need to prioritize the top 3-5 Tigers and Elephants that emerged from the pre-mortem meeting. This action plan should consist of:
- Top themes coming from the pre-mortem meeting.
- Verbatim threats people discussed during the meeting.
- Proposed actions for mitigating the threats.
- An owner that ensures the mitigation plan for each theme actually happens.
Related:
- Go-To-Market Product Strategy - Strategic context for pre-mortem timing
- From Project to Product Management - Understanding product boundaries and risks
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