Pre-mortem technique uses prospective hindsight to identify potential failures before they occur. By putting yourself into the place and time where a project has already failed, team members can then work backwards to determine what might lead to that failure and take proactive steps to mitigate those risks.
Further reading
- Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events - Journal of Behavioural Decision Making
- Pre-mortem: how to anticipate failure with prospective hindsight - Ness Labs
- Pre-mortem - Wikipedia
- The Power of Prospective Hindsight - Pennyworth
- Hindsight – it’s not just for past events - Oliver Burkeman/Guardian