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 business environment, a project is often confronted with high level of uncertainty.Dealing with these uncertainties requires a different management approach. As opposed to a Post-Mortem, the Pre-Mortem is usually conducted at the beginning of a project. A post-mortem is one after death. The problem with Post_Mortem is that it is too late. The sense of Pre-Mortem preventing to conduct a Post-Mortem. If can think of it as a port-mortem before anything is actually died. Post-Mortem in businesses is too late.

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 the project life cycle. The analysis is essential on medium to large-scale projects that can have a major impact on the organization economically, politically, or culturally. The concept of Pre-Mortem is a hypothetical opposite of a project Post-Mortem, where an examination is held at the end of project completion in which the main project stakeholders look back on what went well, what went wrong, and what may have been the causes of the failure. The lessons learned from the post-mortem analysis are useful for future projects. However, learning from the problems at the end of a project can only benefit the future project, hence, it is of no use to the current project, as it has already failed, . A Pre-Mortem on the other hand attempts to shift learning to the beginning of a project. The project team is asked to imagine everything that could go wrong during the project period and that could cause the project to fail . The analysis is performed based on six steps as depicted in the figure and these steps are further elaborated in the Application section of this article.

According to the PMI standard, a project goes through five phases during its life cycle which are: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and control, and closure . The Pre-Mortem analysis is preferred to be conducted during the planning phase, where you have a clear scope and goals and where the project team is determined and introduced to the project .

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

The Role of Intuition in Decision-Making

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 on the problem, whereas analytical decision-making the process is deliberate and controlled.

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 . As the name implies the book aims to strengthen the intuitive decision-making skills of organizational leaders, project managers, and groups so they can use intuition safely, reliably, and effectively for any decision-making at the workplace. 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 claims 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 discusses regarding intuition 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 simply refers to a biased way of looking at a particular situation. Reversely, Klein states that too often, the project team is afraid to step beyond their usual responsibilities and express their opinions about the project’s success because they either believe in the managers or they do not have the confidence to speak up to the manager and the other members of the team. In this case, the Pre-Mortem technique could help the team open up, develop trust and transparency at the beginning of the project.

The benefits of reducing overconfidence

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, .

The relevance to Project, Program, and Portfolio Management

Uncertainty is an inevitable aspect of most and especially complex projects, even the most proficient managers could face difficulties in handling it.

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 implementation, 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 \cite{Process}. There are five steps for performing a Pre-Mortem analysis depicted in figure \ref{fig:2}, and the steps are elaborated in the following:

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 contenginsy 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.