Premortem
Pre-Mortem
A managerial strategy in which a project team imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project or organization.
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Origin
Gary Klein, a cognitive psychologist known for his research into naturalistic decision-making, introduced the premortem in a September 2007 article in the Harvard Business Review. Klein grounded the technique in earlier academic research: a 1989 study by Deborah Mitchell, Jay Russo, and Nancy Pennington had found that "prospective hindsight" — mentally simulating a future event as already completed — improved risk identification by 30%. Klein had been developing the method for years before publishing it.
Updated February 22, 2026