Here's a great idea from Gary Klein in September's Harvard Business Review: rather than conducting a project postmortem, after a project has died, why not conduct an imaginary project premortem at the start of the project?
Klein writes:
"Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton
School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University
of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight -- imagining that an
event has already occurred -- increases the ability to correctly
identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%."
Here's the process, in a nutshell:
- The project leader kicks off by announcing that the project has failed spectacularly.
- Everyone participating independently brain dumps why they think this has happened.
- Next the leader asks each team member, starting with the project manager, to read one reason from his or her list; everyone states a different reason until all have been recorded.
- After the session is over, the project manager reviews the list, looking for ways to strengthen the plan.
As it happens, I am helping one of my clients PMs to kick off a project tomorrow. We will definitely be using a premortem.
Even more importantly ... I've just conducted a quick but very personal premortem on myself - imagining what I just died off - and I suddenly feel overwhelmingly motivated to lose weight.
