
The side mirror view from an automobile. Faintly printed on the mirror are the words, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." It's a common warning on side-view mirrors. There should be a warning for retrospectives. Something like, "Insights you acquire in this retrospective are biased in favor of the backward-looking time perspective." There is a reasonable risk in retrospectives that you'll miss important and painful realizations, and focus instead on less important and less painful stuff. Have courage. Be willing to look at possible failure modes from the perspective of the future.
Image by askifte at PixaBay.
A few weeks ago, my post was about "Disproof of Concept" as an alternative to "proof of concept." The goal of a disproof of concept exercise is to find the problems with an idea as fast as possible, to enable adjustments while there is still time. This post reminded my friend Jim (that's his preferred format of citation) to drop me a note about a method he has used, called a premortem. Yes, the premortem is an actual thing. And it provides significant advantages to any organization interested in improving its results. [Klein 2007]
In what follows, I depart from my usual preferred terminology. The term postmortem comes from the Latin root for death. That's why I prefer the term retrospective. But in writing about premortems, the term postmortem seems more symmetric, so I'll use it in this post.
Postmortems and safety
A postmortem — also known as an after-action review, retrospective, or lessons-learned exercise — is a special ritual performed at the end of a project that enables the team to process its experience before tackling the next project. [Kerth 2001] Postmortems include exercises carefully designed to enable teams to examine their own performance without fear of jeopardizing careers. The sense of psychological safety is essential. Without safety, important truths can remain suppressed. Learning is limited.
As Kerth puts it, "Part of being safe means knowing that there will be no retribution for being honest (such as being given a negative evaluation during the next performance review). Trust must be established and maintained during a retrospective." Honesty and trust are the basis for disclosure of the information that leads to learning.
Premortems and safety
A premortem is A premortem is essentially a simulated
postmortem for a project that's
actually still in the planning stagesessentially a simulated postmortem for a project that's actually still in the planning stages. To conduct a premortem, the participants imagine that they have been assembled to conduct a postmortem on the project at hand at some point in the future after the project has failed. The task of the premortem is to uncover the factors that led to this imagined disaster.
Premortems are effective, in part, because they're founded on the same basis of safety and trust as are postmortems. According to Klein, project failure rates are so high, in part, because "too many people are reluctant to speak up about their reservations during the all-important planning phase." The foundation of trust and safety enables the participants to honestly raise issues without fear of retribution. And because the premortem occurs during the planning stage, the issues that surface can be used to improve the project plan — or to adjust the project goals.
Klein again: "By making it safe for dissenters who are knowledgeable about the undertaking and worried about its weaknesses to speak up, you can improve a project's chances of success."
Premortems and temporal perspective
Premortems offer another advantage only loosely related to psychological safety. When we as humans make sense of events, the way we think about the events depends on whether they are future events or past events. [Mitchell 1989] As Mitchell, et al., put it, "When people consider an event that has not yet occurred, they adopt a forward perspective. If they look back in time to a concluded event, they adopt a backward perspective."
When we contemplate possible future events, we're making predictions about what might happen. When we contemplate past events, we tend to seek explanations for why they happened. The difference in focus — what vs. why — tends to produce a difference in results. In planning, we're focused on future events, and our focus tends to emphasize what we plan to do and what might go wrong. The premortem enables participants to consider the events of the plan and the speed bumps and risks that developed, as if they had already occurred. The participants can then consider why troubles developed, which leads them to insights they might not otherwise have attained.
Last words
Premortems offer a way to gain the benefits of the powerful combination of psychological safety and a shift in temporal perspective. To take it a step further, consider conducting a premortem about your coming postmortem, or a postmortem about a recent premortem. Top
Next Issue
Projects never go quite as planned. We expect that, but we don't expect disaster. How can we get better at spotting disaster when there's still time to prevent it? How to Spot a Troubled Project Before the Trouble Starts is filled with tips for executives, senior managers, managers of project managers, and sponsors of projects in project-oriented organizations. It helps readers learn the subtle cues that indicate that a project is at risk for wreckage in time to do something about it. It's an ebook, but it's about 15% larger than "Who Moved My Cheese?" Just . Order Now! .
Footnotes
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Project Management:
Nine Project Management Fallacies: IV
- Some of what we "know" about managing projects just isn't so. Understanding these last three
of the nine fallacies of project management helps reduce risk and enhances your ability to complete
projects successfully.
Ground Level Sources of Scope Creep
- We usually think of scope creep as having been induced by managerial decisions. And most often, it probably
is. But most project team members — and others as well — can contribute to the problem.
How We Waste Time: II
- We're all pretty good at wasting time. We're also fairly certain we know when we're doing it. But we're
much better at it than we know. Here's Part II of a little catalog of time wasters, emphasizing those
that are outside — or mostly outside — our awareness.
More Obstacles to Finding the Reasons Why
- Retrospectives — also known as lessons learned exercises or after-action reviews — sometimes
miss important insights. Here are some additions to our growing catalog of obstacles to learning.
How to Get Out of Firefighting Mode: II
- We know we're in firefighting mode when a new urgent problem disrupts our work on another urgent problem,
and the new problem makes it impossible to use the solution we thought we had for some third problem
we were also working on. Here's Part II of a set of suggestions for getting out of firefighting mode.
See also Project Management and Effective Meetings for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming December 6: Off-Putting and Conversational Narcissism at Work: III
- Having off-putting interactions is one of four themes of conversational narcissism. Here are seven behavioral patterns that relate to off-putting interactions and how abusers use them to control conversations. Available here and by RSS on December 6.
And on December 13: Contrary Indicators of Psychological Safety: I
- To take the risks that learning and practicing new ways requires, we all need a sense that trial-and-error approaches are safe. Organizations seeking to improve processes would do well to begin by assessing their level of psychological safety. Available here and by RSS on December 13.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick





Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenogMhuqCxAnbfLvzbner@ChacigAthhhYwzZDgxshoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
