The Pre-Mortem Analysis: Anticipate failure before starting a project

Written by Hazal Alawi

Abstract

Projects are by their nature unusual things that have not been done before or at least have not been done in the same way before , and that introduces uncertainty that can affect the outcome of a project. Because projects are uncertain, they all carry risks that can cause things to go wrong. These risks can potentially change the outcomes of a project. Sometimes the project managers are well aware of the risks beforehand, otherwise they completely unforeseen. We have all heard the sentiment behind Murphy's Law: “ Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong ”. This is also applicable in the field of project management; projects are full of uncertainties that may or may not be predicted. A prudent project manager will make some provisions during the project planning phase to deal with the known unknowns . There are techniques available that can help identify project risks before they occur, thus eliminating the probability of project failure. Studies have shown that one of the most effective tools that can prepare project managers and project teams for what can go wrong is called Pre-Mortem analysis which is the main topic of this article.

The uniqueness of the Pre-Mortem technique is that is typically conducted at the beginning of a project after a project team has been introduced to the project . The goal of conducting a Pre-Mortem is to identify vulnerabilities or any signs of threats at the outset that could lead to risks of failure in the project and its course of action, hence increasing the success rate of a project. The technique will not only enrich the project by raising awareness of uncertainties and their likely consequences on the project's success but it also strengthens the team members’ intuitions to become better at mentally simulating how a project is likely to play out .

Why doing Pre-Mortem Analysis

In a dynamic and ever-changing business environment, projects are often confronted with a high level of uncertainty. As uncertainty is an inevitable aspect of most but especially large and complex projects, even the most proficient managers can face difficulties in handling it to ensure the success of a project . Pre-Mortem Analysis as a risk anticipation planning technique conducted at an early stage of a project life cycle to identify and mitigate early signs of trouble that might influence the success of the project. The Pre-Mortem analysis was developed by a research psychologist and expert on business decision making Dr. Gary Klein. The technique first occurred in his 2004 book, The Power of Intuition: How to use your gut feelings to make better decisions at work . The purpose of the Pre-Mortem analysis is to prevent the project from failure by identifying the potential risks before they occur at an early stage of a project life cycle.

The Pre-Mortem analysis is the opposite of Post-Mortem analysis. A Post-Mortem analysis in the medical context is the process that allows identifying the causes of the patient's death. The same process is usually applied for projects, in which the team gathers after project completion to discuss the successes or failures of the project. The objective is to reflect upon and try to understand what went well and what went wrong that has led to the 'death' of the project. This is a great way to learn from the mistakes and the results are useful for future projects. The downside of post-mortem is by that time it is too late - the project has failed and there is no risk of accident for a project that has failed . The investment, the time, and the effort spent on the project are all lost.

The purpose of pre-mortem is to prevent failure by pretending that the project has failed and start generating reasons for the failure. A pre-mortem analysis attempts to prevent 'conducting a Post-Mortem' by shit learning to the beginning of a project. The project team is asked to imagine that the project has failed and therefore think backward to identify everything that could lead to the failure of the project . According to the PMBOK guide (p. 18-32) a project goes through five process groups during its life cycle and these process groups are defined: as Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and control, and closure. The pre-mortem is preferred to be conducted during the planning phase, where the scope and goals are clearly defined and the project team is determined and introduced to the project . The pre-mortem analysis is essential on medium to large-scale projects that can have a major impact on the organization economically, politically, or culturally.

The Role of Intuition in Decision-Making

According to the creator of pre-mortem technique, Gary Klein, one of the factors for project failure is that people, espesicifcally the project team, are reluctant to speak up and express their concerns about the project during the important planning phase . According to Klein, the pre-mortem analysis does not only help the project teams to anticipate potential risks early on, but it also improves the group-dynamic, hence reducing the risk of groupthink. Groupthink occurs when team loyalty. Closed groups with dominated leaders show a natural tendency to shut themselves off from critical arguments. Conducting a pre-mortem at the start of the project process, in which the team does not know each other well, allows each team member to state their individual concerns openly without suffering team pressure and create transparency between all parties .

Klein also claims that the pre-mortem technique also helps the team members to boost their intuition for making better decisions . Intuition in this context is simply understood as a mental process in which project managers and project teams form a belief or judgment without any conscious awareness of an inference process at the workplace. Intuitive decision-making refers to quick and relatively automatic responses to problems without any use of formal tools and procedures, whereas in analytical decision-making the process is deliberate and controlled . The use of pre-mortem analysis could help strengthen the intuitive decision-making skills of the project managers and teams so they can use intuition safely, reliably, and effectively for making decisions on the undertaken project. Klein argues that people often acquire better intuition through experiences, but this is a passive approach and one's career cannot wait years for experience. He means that there are steps one can follow to speed up the process of developing skills in intuitive decision-making and understanding how to combine intuition with analysis. The book provides tools to apply intuitions effectively in the workplace to make better decisions, spot problems, and manage uncertainties in which one of the tools is the Pre-mortem technique .

Another interesting issue that Klein brings up is that often project managers with strong intuition skills through repeated experiences can become overconfident in making judgments and decisions. They might have an inflated belief or judgment that the project is going to be successful . Overconfidence, as Daniel Kahneman called in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow , is the most significant of the cognitive biases. Overconfident bias simply refers to a biased way of unconsciously looking at a particular situation that can lead to wrong assessment. Often the team does not step beyond their usual responsibilities and does not analyze the risks of the project deeply enough since they are believing the project manager's opinion more than investigating things themselves. This is the effect of authority bias that the team gets more influenced by the manager's and or other group members' opinions. To know more about the different types of biases in project management see (Biases in Project Management).

The relevance of Pre-Mortem Analysis to Project Management

There are many authors that have been written about multiple reasons that projects can fail and yet projects do fail at a high rate . Many projects do not deliver their full potential on time, within the budget, and with the required objective. Often project managers and team members look back and say to themselves why did we not see or anticipate that thing that went wrong but then it is too late. The project manager plays an important role in the success of a project. In a fast-paced environment, it is not always feasible or easy to perform deep analytical analysis to predict future events or risks that can have an impact on the undertaken project. Using the pre-mortem analysis at the start of the project can increase the success of the project by giving the project manager opportunity for making a better plan.

A study made by the University of Colorado,1989 , emphasizes that when imagining that an event has already taken place, it increases the ability to identify the causes for future outcomes by 30 percent, .

Risk management is the most important topic in project management.

Making the project team who are knowledgeable about the undertaken project speak up about its weaknesses enables the project managers to produce a better plan that can improve the project's chances of success

Application

When conducting a Pre-Mortem, the project to be analyzed should have a clear scope, and well-defined goals to be achieved, as well as the time frame for the project completion, should be known. Usually, the associated project manager facilitates the Pre-Mortem for the project teams and all other relevant stakeholders. Therefore, it is required that the project manager should develop familiarity with facilitation to expand her/his role to become the facilitator. There are five steps for performing a Pre-Mortem analysis depicted in figure 1, and the steps are elaborated in the following section.

Figure 1 The steps in the Pre-mortem project analysis, (own visualization based on

How to perform a Pre-Mortem Analysis on a project

Before performing the analysis, the project manager has to do some preparation in terms of the resources required which are: - Gathering a team consisting of people that are directly involved with the development of the project, but also other relevant stakeholders that have a certain degree of power and interest for the project. - A room with a whiteboard - Stack of post-it notes for notes and sharpies for every person.

The kickoff meeting usually lasts 60 - 90 minutes depending on how big the project is.

The steps of the kick-off meeting are descriped belw:

The six steps

1 Prepare by getting familiar with the project

The project manager, or in the case of agile project management, the scrum master selects the team members that are going to carry out the project and other key stakeholders. These people should already be introduced to the project scope and goals. Otherwise, the manager should prepare a clear definition of the project objectives and goals.

2 Imagine the project completely failed - a Fiasco

The project manager starts by making the participants imagine that the project has failed. Meaning, that let them pretend that the project is completely failed. The question is what are all the possible reasons we could have to cause this failure.

3. Generate reasons for Failure

The Manager encourages the participants to write down all the reasons they can come up with that may have caused. The team gets a few minutes to generate a list of possible threats that may have caused the failure. Here, the intuition of the participants is important. Every participant has a unique set of experiences that they bring, and the collective of knowledge is far greater and better than that of one person.

4. Consolidate the List of reasons

Once all the member of the group is done writing down their concerns, the facilitator asks each person to state one of her/his concerns or any specific issues. Each issue is recorded on a whiteboard. This process continues until every member has revealed every issue on their list. By the end of this step, the facilitator should have a comprehensive list of the participants' concerns at hand.

5. Generate ways to improve the project

The participants work through the problems identified to determine and categorize them based on the level of impact that they could have on the project. This is done through a qualitative evaluation and discussion where the team and the project manager talk about how to eliminate each of those reasons. The most critical issues will be addressed and potential solutions will be suggested. Some of the participants will be signed to examine the solution forward. Creating a matrix of problems looking for the ones which are most serious and the most likely. Decide which are the most serious risk to the project's success and the ones which are most likely to happen. Evaluate which of these problems are in our control and what we need to avoid them from happening. Which of the problems are serious and likely but out of our control in which you have to make a contingency plan of what could be done if this happens.

Who should participate

A successful Pre-Mortem analysis must focus on anything that could impact the success of a project. Therefore, any stakeholders who are knowledgeable about the project can help either identify threats or propose solutions. It is not enough to only perform the analysis with the project team, project manager, or scrum master. A thorough analysis involves also users and project sponsors any other relevant stakeholders that influence the project.

How to Mitigate and Monitor the Risks

The list of the identified trouble spots must be periodically monitored and improved continuously throughout the project life cycle. The ’Risk Register’ technique can be applied to list and document the identified risks or the trouble spots identified during the Pre-Mortem.

Reflections

Benefits of doing Pre-Mortem Analaysis

The Pre-Mortem technique has also other benefits besides identifying potential risks in a project. The technique helps to reduce the overconfidence that the project managers have towards the project and its planned goals to be achieved. It is an efficient technique that allows to quickly identify high priority issues through bias-free and diverse analysis by involving all relevant stakeholders in the process, and ensuring everyone contributes to the discussion. Based on the experiments made by Gary Klein \cite{GaryK}, it has shown that When people approach a scenario with a failure mindset, they tend to generate more reasons for the failure, and they would suggest things they ordinarily would not suggest.

The method can strengthen both the manager's and the team members' mental model as they hear opinions and concerns about the project. It can create a corporate culture of honesty and trust that the team members would gain for each other as they hear ideas they had not thought of themselves.

Limitations

Intuition does not always prove reliable, it depends on the types of decisions that the project- managers, and teams face. It is not realistic to use intuition when dealing with complex and uncertain projects. Moreover, not many organizations take the decision-making through intuition seriously but rather rely on analytical and empirical data for assessing project risks.

Annotated Bibliography

This section provides key references for additional information on the subject matter, which are relevant to understanding and applying the Pre-Mortem technique.

• Project Management Institute(2009): Practice standard for project risk management.

This book covers risk management processes as it is applied to a project. The practice standard is based on the PMBOK Guide and aligned with other PMI standards. The book provides different tools for identifying, assessing, and controlling the risks of a project. The Pre-Mortem analysis technique is not included in this book but it gives a detailed insight on how to mitigate and monitor the risks by providing a variety of approaches to risk management that can be useful for handling the risks anticipated from Pre-Mortem analysis.

• Klien, G. (2003): The Power of Intuition: How to use your gut feelings to make better decisions at work, Currency

The book reveals that 90 percent of critical decision-making is based on our intuition. The author of the book, and the creator of the Pre-Mortem technique, Gary Klein is an expert on business decision making and his book is filled with fascinating tips and ideas, including the detailed explanation behind the concept of ’pre-mortem’ analysis for assessing the risks inherent in any decision, and social psychology. The book is essential reading for those who have a desire to develop their intuition skills in any context as well gaining more knowledge on the Pre-Mortem technique

• Project Management Institute (2017): A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), (6th edition)

PMBOK Guide book is the recognized standard of project management that provides rules, guidelines, and characteristics for project management. The stage of the project lifecycle and the project management responsibilities on stage-by-stage are further elaborated in the book that could be useful for the readers.