Pre-mortem workshop facilitator

Ingredients

• 1 facilitator (neutral, not the project lead)
• 5–12 participants across disciplines
• Sticky notes (physical or Miro board)
• Timer visible to all
• One-sentence project goal written large

Prep

Send the project goal 48 hours ahead. Ask each participant to arrive with three “what could kill this” scenarios written down. No sharing beforehand.

Phases

1. Set the scene (5 min) — Read the goal aloud. Announce: “Imagine we shipped and it failed spectacularly. Why?”
2. Silent generation (10 min) — Everyone writes failure causes on stickies. No discussion. One cause per sticky.
3. Affinity mapping (15 min) — Post all stickies. Group related causes. Name each cluster.
4. Dot vote (5 min) — Each person gets three dots. Vote on the clusters that feel most dangerous.
5. Deep-dive top three (30 min) — For each top-voted cluster: what would trigger it, what signals would we see early, what mitigations exist now.
6. Action items (15 min) — Convert mitigations into owned tasks with deadlines. One owner per task.
7. Close (5 min) — Each person shares one word about how they feel leaving the room.

Facilitator traps

• Letting the project lead dominate — they speak last in every phase.
• Skipping silent generation — groupthink kills pre-mortems.
• Ending without owners — unowned mitigations are wishes.