Most projects fail to meet their original goals of scope, time, and budget — and the reasons are often built in right from the start. The Premortem analysis offers a powerful approach to identify and assess potential risks before a project even kicks off, leveraging cross-functional perspectives to surface hidden pitfalls early. Applying this technique systematically can significantly improve project success rates and help avoid costly surprises down the road.
I am sure you all followed the Artemis 2 mission earlier this year which carried a crew of four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon returning them safely to Earth. With all main goals of the mission accomplished Artemis 2 certainly was a great achievement and a huge success. However, if we broaden the perspective for a moment and take a look at the entire Artemis program things do not look that positive: The program is currently running several years behind original schedule and has accumulated 7 billion of cost overrun [1]. It was on the verge of being cancelled and just recently subject to another major plan revision. While size and complexity of the Artemis program are outstanding, the deviations from plan are in the manner common to the vast majority of projects across industries. If you consult the latest CHAOS report from the Standish group [2] you will find that only about 30% of all projects and programs can be deemed successful, meaning they were completed within given scope, time and budget. The remaining 70% encountered significant obstacles during execution or failed completely.
In today´s dynamic landscape, however, it may not suffice anymore to assess project success solely by adherence or non-adherence to the “iron triangle” of time, budget and scope. The Project Management Institute (PMI) therefore came up with a modified definition of success [3]: “delivered value that was worth the effort and expense”, more emphasizing long-term outcomes, stakeholder satisfaction, and alignment with strategic goals. Along with this the PMI introduced a new global metric called the “Net Project Success Score” (NPSS) evaluating projects on a continuum of success (sustainability, customer satisfaction, impact) rather than a binary outcome. The NPSS metric uses a 10-point stakeholder survey system and is defined as % successes - % of failures. The global NPSS over the past few years remained constant at about 36%, also highlighting that there is much room for improvement.
Why is that and – as important – what can be done to improve these statistics? Among the usual suspects causing project failures are poor requirements engineering and scope creep, an underestimation of scope, unrealistic timelines, budget cuts, conflicts within the team and with stakeholders, resource and skill level constraints, just to name a few. In my experience almost every project to some extent encounters one or more of such factors during its life cycle. Often enough, the reasons for a later failure are already being built into the project´s inception and are either overlooked, ignored, or accepted, the latter often under pressure by top management. This is why a proper assessment of uncertainties in the early life of a project becomes so important.
Every project, especially a larger, more complex one will be facing significant uncertainties.
For projects to stay on scope, time and budget it is therefore critical to manage the large degree of uncertainty in the early phase(s). A NASA Technical Report [5] impressively illustrates how the cost of errors increases through the project life cycle. The report quantified cost factors for both, Software and System projects, for finding and fixing materialized risks at different stages of the project (Fig. 2). The later in a project´s life cycle risks materialize the more pronounced the cost effects will be. Risks surfacing during the requirements phase are usually still manageable while those materializing during execution, test or even deployment phases cause costs to skyrocket and can actually kill a project.
One efficient tool to manage uncertainty right at the beginning of a project is to conduct a “Premortem” analysis. Premortem is an approach that aims to reduce the Cone of Uncertainty by detecting potential risks even before the project really started. The concept is rooted in behavioral psychology and was introduced by psychologist Gary A. Klein in 2007 [6]. The approach was then picked up and endorsed as a risk mitigation technique by prominent economists, namely by Daniel Kahnemann and Richard Thaler, two US Nobel Laureates for Economy. Kahnemann described it as “his favorite debiasing technique”. In a YouTube video clip [7] he explains what he means with this remark: „Organizations like optimists, being a pessimist close to the launch of a project is taking a BIG risk. A Premortem analysis flips the table by rewarding people for finding flaws in the current plan”. Richard Thaler was assuming that “Many companies that were once household names and no longer exist might still be thriving if they had conducted a Premortem” [8].
The Premortem method looks at a project in “prospective hindsight”: it assumes a project was greenlighted and then resulted in a complete fiasco. Imaging the failure as a reality the team looks back at the project trying to identify the main root cause(s) for the failure. This is typically done in a cross-functional workshop setting at project start and should be moderated by a person not involved in the project, ideally an external facilitator. Prospective project team members, the project owner and sponsor shall be invited as well as stakeholders of departments or functions affected by the project. A typical setup for a Premortem workshop is depicted in Fig 3. The facilitator will start the workshop with a general introduction into the topic explaining the procedure and sharing the goals as well as the workshop rules. The first step then consists of collecting potential risks, pitfalls and traps for the envisioned project.
Depending on the complexity of the project and the number of participants the facilitator may employ various brainstorming techniques (brainwriting, the 6-3-5 method, round robin, …) for this purpose, either with the entire group or in cross-functional subgroups. At this stage there is only collection, no discussion of individual risks. The facilitator needs to ensure that sufficient time is allocated to this exercise, that every participant is encouraged and feels safe to provide input, and that the concerns of all stakeholders are reflected in the collection. The input obtained during the brainstorming sessions should then also be complemented by learnings from previous projects of similar type (“Lessons Learned”), if available.
In a second step the potential risks are analyzed for patterns and are classified into categories. Such classification could be done
Once this is accomplished the facilitator will start another session of group work aimed to identify high impact risks in each of the categories. Risks can generally be stratified by likelihood of occurrence and associated impact on the project:
The focus of the Premortem analysis is clearly on identifying and ranking those risks that are likely and have a high impact, and only if time allows on those with high impact but lower probability to happen. Other risks are usually not further evaluated as part of the workshop but will be later fed into risk registers as part of the project´s risk management. As a final step the group will already start to think about possible precautions and mitigations to keep the identified top risks under control for the new project. After the workshop the facilitator will assemble a Premortem report summarizing the results of the workshop and providing recommendations derived therefrom for the project team.
Premortem analyses represent an integral part of a company´s knowledge management system (Fig. 4).
A Lessons Learned repository for completed or stopped projects or programs should be part of every company´s product development process. It is a valuable source of issues encountered and of what proved to work well and can be exploited once a Premortem analysis for the next project is to be conducted. The results of the Premortem in turn will provide input into the risk register and general project risk management. After completion, the projects risk management activities will deliver new Lessons Learned, thus completing the knowledge management cycle.
Having been part of Premortem sessions and having facilitated Premortem workshops for clients I can definitely confirm the value of this technique. The results not only provide the project team with an excellent starting point for the general project risk management, but in almost every workshop new and for the team surprising risks for the type of project surfaced. This is catalyzed by the cross-functional setting which not only includes persons directly involved in the project but also stakeholders across the company who will be affected by the project´s deliverables. This ensures a much more comprehensive assessment and helps identifying risks which may have gone undetected if solely left to the project core team. Some of such risks bear the potential to fundamentally threaten the project and could lead to failure when not captured at and managed right from the start. Examples could be missed intellectual property (protected prior art), trade restrictions, important stakeholders opposing the project, new and expensive manufacturing equipment required, new regulations and guidelines, or poor fit of the new product into existing sales and service channels.
In summary, and for the reasons described, any company or institution planning to engage into a sizeable new project or a new transformational initiative is well advised to incorporate a Premortem workshop. A Premortem analysis will significantly enhance the chances for a successful project. To cite Gary A. Kline: “In the end, a Premortem may be the best way to circumvent the need for a painful Postmortem!”
References
[1] Report on NASA´s Top Management and Performance Challenges 2025. 2025-report-on-nasas-top-management-and-performance-challenges.pdf
[2] The Standish Group. Chaos Report: Beyond Infinity, 2020.
[3] Maximizing Project Successes: What is Project Success? (2024). Project Management Institute. PMI Report, pmi.org
[4] The Cone of Uncertainty. Construx. September 2016.
[5] JM Stecklein: Error Cost Escalation Through the Project Life Cycle - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS). 2004.
[6] Gary A. Klein. Performing a Project Premortem . Harvard Business Review, 2007.
[7] Daniel Kahnemann. Premortem to eliminate thinking biases. YouTube video, 2014. Link: kahnemann youtube video premortem
[8] Richard H. Thaler. What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known? Edge.org 2017.