Premortem works backward from an undesirable outcome in order to prevent it

A Premortem is a strategic leadership function that starts by defining an undesirable future outcome (e.g., the failure of a product) and then works backwards to identify the factors that would bring it about. In so doing, it provides insight that can help shape strategic plans to prevent the undesirable outcome.

The premortem legitimizes doubts, which provides two main advantages:

1. It overcomes groupthink.
2. It unleashes the imagination of knowledgeable individuals.^[1]
   Varol elaborates:

With a premortem, the investigation comes before we have acted, when the actual outcome isn’t known… In a premortem, we travel forward in time and set up a thought experiment where we assume the project failed. We then step back and ask, “What went wrong?” By vividly visualizing a doomsday scenario, we come up with potential problems and determine how to avoid them.
…
When you conduct a premortem and think through what can go wrong, you should assign probabilities to each potential problem. If you quantify uncertainty ahead of time—there’s a 50 percent chance that your new product might fail—you’re more likely to recognize the role that luck played in any resulting success.
…
Premortems can be a powerful way of organically uncovering dissent. Because they assume a bad outcome—that the project failed—and ask people to generate reasons for the failure, they can provide psychological safety for expressing genuine criticism and relaying it upward^[2]

#strategic

See also:

• Backcasting works backward from a desired outcome
• Scenario Planning envisions the future
• Strategic forecasting guides decision-making and catalyzes innovation
• Inversion illuminates solutions by identifying what would make things worse

Think Like a Rocket Scientist – Varol (2020), ch. 9, § “The premortem”