Run a Pre-Mortem Before a Major Launch
Product & Design · Half day · Beginner
The job
Surface risks that optimism bias hides before committing to a major product launch.
What the sponsor gets
Each canvas and map from this playbook — Pre-Mortem Canvas, Assumption Map, Prioritisation Matrix, Retrospective Canvas — exports as a PDF, or as PowerPoint on Pro, straight from the session, and the whole run exports as one PowerPoint for the sponsor. Nothing is redrawn.
The method
Set the scene
Gather the full launch team. Open with: "It's 3 months from now and this launch has failed spectacularly. What went wrong?" Make clear this is about finding risks, not assigning blame.
Tip: Have people write silently for 5 minutes before anyone speaks — it prevents anchoring on the loudest voice.
Capture failure scenarios
Create a Pre-Mortem canvas and collect every failure scenario the team can imagine. Group them into clusters: technical, market, operational, people, and external.
Tip: Encourage absurd scenarios — they often contain a kernel of a real risk nobody wants to name.
Map your launch assumptions
Transfer the failure scenarios into an Assumption Map. Plot each underlying assumption by importance and certainty. The top-right quadrant (important + uncertain) is your danger zone.
Tip: If "customers will understand the value proposition immediately" is in your danger zone, delay the launch and test messaging first.
Prioritise mitigations
For each high-risk assumption, brainstorm mitigations. Plot them on a Prioritisation Matrix by impact and effort. You need actions you can execute before launch day.
Tip: A mitigation that takes longer than your launch timeline isn't a mitigation — it's a reason to reconsider the timeline.
Assign risk owners and triggers
Every top risk gets a single owner and a trigger condition ("if X happens, we do Y"). Document these as a living risk register, not a slide deck that gets filed away.
Tip: Schedule a 15-minute risk check-in every 48 hours in the final week before launch.
Post-launch retrospective
Within one week of launch, run a retrospective. Compare what actually happened against your pre-mortem predictions. This builds the team's risk-sensing muscle for next time.
Tip: Celebrate the risks you caught and mitigated — it reinforces the value of doing pre-mortems.
The canvases and maps
- Pre-Mortem Canvas
- It starts from failure — the project, how it failed, root causes, mitigations and early warnings — so people can voice doubts as foresight rather than dissent.
- Assumption Map
- Assumptions plotted by importance and certainty, so the leaps of faith that need testing first stand apart from the safe bets.
- Prioritisation Matrix
- Impact against effort in four quadrants — quick wins, major projects, fill-ins and avoid — so the team trades off instead of calling everything a priority.
- Retrospective Canvas
- What went well and what to improve, then start, stop and continue, so reflection ends in actions rather than a list of complaints.
What it doesn't do
It doesn't run the room for you or decide for the client. The steps, canvases and duration are a starting point you adapt; the judgement stays yours.