What do you understand by the term project premortem

Question

I would like to know whether the concept like project premortem is still relevant in project management?

Answer 1

Project pre-mortem is one of the methods to identify risks. The team sit together and imagine that project has miserably failed and brainstorm the reasons that have caused the failure. This way, they will be able to take corrective action upfront before they actually fail & do a post-mortem to record it as project learning. This terminology comes from Agile practice.

When we are identifying risks we are essentially doing a pre-mortem so anytime risks need to be articulated as part of the chartering of a project that would be an informal example of this.

When dealing with highly complex or highly dangerous (from a human safety perspective) projects, it is more common for a structured premortem to happen. FMEA or similar methods could be used in conjunction with having a diverse group of SMEs with good imaginations!