“What could possibly go wrong?”

A premortem is similar to a postmortem1, except that while a postmortem analyses existing failures to determine causes, a premortem analyses hypothetical failures to infer causes.

That is: premortems are intended to prevent problems before they happen, rather than preventing them from happening again.

Premortem culture exists when answering the question “what could possibly go wrong?” is an ongoing part of an organization’s operations…even when it’s difficult to demonstrate2 its value.

This blog explores concepts and practices that relate to establishing, and maintaining, a premortem culture3.

  1. Originally from medicine (of course) as an examination of the events leading up to an (unexpected) death (hence “post mortem”), and popularized in the tech world by various publications, including Google’s SRE book. ↩

  2. “None of the things for which we’ve had premortem exercises have ever happened. Why should we keep funding them?” “Because you want them to keep not happening.” ↩

  3. Postmortems, and postmortem culture, are great and premortems are not intended to take their place…just reduce how often they’re necessary. ↩