How can the pre-mortem method improve risk identification in project management?

Lessons Learned Risk Management

Eduard Hernandez

Community Champion

Product Operations Program Manager Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

The pre-mortem method should not be confused with the review of lessons learned. Lessons learned are retrospective: they capture what actually went wrong (or right) in past projects and provide a valuable baseline of known risks and best practices. Reviewing them is a critical first step to avoid repeating mistakes. The pre-mortem is forward-looking: it asks the team to imagine that the current project has already failed and to identify new, context-specific reasons for that failure.

Look forward to hearing about your experience and views.

Posted: Apr 17, 2026 10:15 AM

Sort By:

Pavan Maddi

Community Champion

Buona Vista, Singapore

Pre-mortems sharpen risk thinking by shifting the team from optimism to realism. When you imagine the project has failed, people speak more freely, surface hidden assumptions, and reveal context-specific risks that lessons learned cannot capture. It creates early alignment, sharper mitigation plans, and a shared sense of vigilance from day one.

Posted: Apr 18, 2026 2:00 AM

Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada

Eduard -

Pre-mortems are a fundamental component of effective risk identification & analysis. the challenge is that there needs to be sufficient diversity of perspectives brought to bear AND the willingness of key stakeholders to keep open minds to the risks identified. As usual, low levels of psychological safety within the risk identification team will result in obvious points of failure being identified rather than the more esoteric ones which could end up being a more realistic source of pain.

Kiron

Posted: Apr 19, 2026 8:48 AM

David Portas London, United Kingdom

Eduard, Thanks for the question which gave me some pause for thought. It occurs to me that I probably have never done pre-mortems more than once per project. How often do you think they ought to happen? As you say, they are different from retrospectives, but I suppose it's arguable that if you have a regular retrospective meeting (typically every 2 or 3 weeks for example) then you could address a pre-mortem question at that meeting: "Do we have any new failure scenarios?"

Posted: Apr 19, 2026 3:23 PM

Bryan Campbell Agile Transformation and Coaching| 7C's Consulting Inc. Tomball, Tx, United States

I find the term 'pre-mortem' interesting particularly if you're familiar with its Latin root. This feels like a normal part of the risk identification process.

Posted: Apr 20, 2026 10:50 AM

Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa

Community Champion

Program Manager| HARPER SRL Santo Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic

I like how you separate both. Lessons learned give you a starting point, but they don’t capture what’s unique about the current context.

With pre-mortems, what I’ve seen is that people are more open to calling out risks they wouldn’t normally mention. It brings out assumptions that usually stay hidden.

Posted: Apr 21, 2026 12:06 AM

Syed Ashir Riaz

Community Champion

AI-Powered Social Media Strategist

The pre-mortem method helps identify risks early by asking the team to imagine the project has already failed and to consider why. This makes it easier to spot problems that might otherwise be missed. It also helps the team prepare better solutions before issues happen.

Posted: Apr 22, 2026 2:04 AM

Please login or join to reply

How can the pre-mortem method improve risk identification in project management?

Sponsors

Vendor Events

Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data

Newsletters