jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #43 on 25 Sep 2020 and has tags Strategy: Project Management, Technical Leadership: Other
Use a Pre-Mortem to Identify Project Risks Before They Occur - Mike Cohn
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of psychological safety in teams - making team members comfortable expressing their opinions, including raising issues. Without that, you’re missing important input and potentially running into foreseeable (and foreseen!) problems.
Premortems give explicit encouragement to raise issues. I’ve used these to good effect in some project-kickoff situations - trying to get the team to see obstacles ahead so they can be avoided. With pre-mortems, one step is actually brainstorming ways that things can go wrong. This makes it much easier to chime in with foreseeable issues, and for you to get those insights that they might not be willing to share. And it’s a good way to get people comfortable raising potential problems. Cohn’s article is a good intro to the idea if you haven’t seen it before.
