# The Premortem — Facilitator Guide

> Folder: `the-premortem` · Category: reviews · 4–12 people · 25 min · offline + online · print props · tool pack
> License: CC BY 4.0

A 25-minute, 4–12 person review that runs backwards from a future failure. Before you launch (or after a miss), the team assumes the project has already failed and writes the story of how — which surfaces the risks people were too polite to raise while it still felt optimistic. A premortem is a retrospective pointed at the future.

## Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will have:

1. Written, silently, the story of how this plan failed — pulling out the risks nobody was polite enough to raise while the mood was optimistic.
2. Clustered the root causes and given each of the top three an early-warning signal they'd actually notice in time.
3. Committed one or two preventive actions with a named owner and a by-when — risks named while they're still cheap to fix.

## When to use this activity

- A significant plan is about to start and the kickoff feels great — which is exactly when nobody says the quiet part.
- A launch or milestone is close enough that a named risk is still cheap to defuse.
- Someone has gone quiet in every review of this plan; a premortem gives silence a safe way to speak.

## Why running backwards works

Optimism mutes good judgment. In a healthy kickoff nobody wants to name the thing that could sink it. By declaring the failure already certain, the premortem makes naming it safe and even required — and turns hindsight into foresight while there's still time to act.

## Setup

**Space:** one shared board with three columns — **Root causes · Early-warning signals · Preventive actions**. Online, the same three columns live on a shared board.

**Materials per person:** sticky notes and a pen — the failure story and its causes, written silently.

**Materials for the room:** the card faces from `the-premortem-prop-cards.pdf` — a failure-story card, a root-cause card, an early-warning-signal card, a preventive-action card, an owner-and-by-when card, a blank.

**Grouping:** 4–12 people who are part of a plan that hasn't happened yet (or a review of one that just did).

**Roles:** everyone writes before anyone speaks; you declare the failure certain, run the round-robin, and refuse any cause that ends without a signal.

**Optional:** put `the-premortem-activity-poster.pdf` on the wall so the two rules — "everyone writes before anyone speaks" and "every cause needs a signal" — stay visible. No projector, no account, no online form.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 | Set the scene | Say it plainly: "It's three months from now. The project failed. Everyone write the story of how it happened." Make the failure certain, not hypothetical. |
| 3–10 | Write the failure | Everyone writes the failure story and its causes silently. No talking — this kills anchoring on the loudest voice. |
| 10–16 | Share & post | Round-robin: each person reads one cause and posts it under Root causes. Cluster duplicates as you go. |
| 16–21 | Signal it | For the top three causes, name an early-warning signal — the thing you'd see two months out that tells you this failure is underway. |
| 21–25 | Assign | For the top cause (or two), agree one preventive action with an owner and a by-when. A cause with no signal and no action is just a worry. |

## The card

The three columns are the three card faces: a root cause posted under the first earns an early-warning signal on the second and, for the top one or two, a preventive action with an owner and a by-when on the third. Keep the failure-story card's opening line ("it's three months from now") as the frame the whole board hangs on.

## Failure modes

- **The causes are all safe and obvious.** Nobody named the real one. Ask directly: "if this fails and you'd get blamed — what would you say it was?" Then write that.
- **Every cause has a signal but no owner.** Signals without watchers don't fire. Assign a name to each of the top three before anyone leaves.
- **It turns into a complaint session about another team.** Reframe to what this team can act on; park the rest as a named dependency with an owner who will raise it elsewhere.

## Variations

- **After an actual miss:** run it forward instead — the failure already happened; the exercise becomes a straight retro with better honesty.
- **Two teams, one plan:** each runs it separately, then compare; the differences are where the handoffs are.
- **Standing risk review:** re-run monthly on the same plan; the signals that keep reappearing are the real ones.

## Facilitation notes

- Say the premise as fact, not hypothesis — "it failed" gives people permission; "what if it failed" asks for one.
- Reward the person who names the uncomfortable risk first; that's the behavior the whole format exists to buy.

## Put it on the wall

Print `the-premortem-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) to hold the premise, the three columns and the two rules on one wall while you run it.

## Props in this folder

- `the-premortem-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): failure-story, root-cause, early-warning-signal, preventive-action and owner-and-by-when cards, blanks, branded backs
- `the-premortem-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks (`-Letter.pdf` is US Letter)
- `the-premortem-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole review on one A3 wall sheet
- `the-premortem-guide.md` · `-debrief.md` · `-start-here.md` — the facilitator guide, the debrief, the one-page start here
- `the-premortem-license.md` — what you may do, how to rebrand, what shipped when
- `SKILL.md` · `the-premortem.zip` — the machine-readable manifest, and the whole folder in one download

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the cards, the debrief and this run sheet with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`). The paper version needs nothing but a three-column board, sticky notes and a pen each.