Everyone on the team takes a few minutes to write down every conceivable reason for the project’s failure. Then the team leader goes around the table, asking each person to share a single reason, until all the ideas have been shared. Once all the threats have been surfaced, the project team can Prepare to Be Wrong by adapting its plans to forestall as many of the negative scenarios as possible. The premortem is, in essence, a way of charting out the lower bookend of future possibilities and plotting ways to avoid ending up there.
