A pre-mortem, by contrast, is implemented before a decision rather than after it, so that the decision-making can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the pre-mortem operates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The task is to generate plausible reasons for your research target’s failure. According to researchers from the Wharton School, Cornell University, and the University of Colorado, prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has already occurred—is
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