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Discovery: Pre-Mortem Workshop 

Definition: 

A pre-mortem is bracketed as part of discovery in the discovery initiate phase and is a prospective hindsight method, a way to open a space in a project at its inception to directly address all future potential risks. We perform this activity as a pre-kickoff method on the project. Unlike a more formal risk analysis, the pre-mortem asks team members to directly tap into their experience and intuition, at a time when it is needed most, and is potentially the most useful by posing questions on what ‘might’ go wrong in order to mitigate these risks. 

When & Why: 

Often in projects, the learning is all at the wrong end. Usually after things have already gone horribly wrong or off-track, members of the team gather in a “postmortem” to sagely reflect on what bad assumptions and courses of action added up to a disaster. What makes this doubly unfortunate is that those same team members, somewhere in their collective experience, may have seen it coming that creates a finger-pointing blame culture. Not a positive experience for everyone.  

During the pre-kick-off stage of the Initiation/Immersion phases you will put people at the center of your discovery and Pre-Mortem workshop is no different.