When planning a new initiative, teams naturally focus on how to succeed: setting objectives, building timelines, and assigning owners. But even the strongest plans are vulnerable to problems no one saw coming. Delayed timelines, misaligned stakeholders, and overlooked dependencies can quietly derail progress and erode trust. The issue isn't a lack of planning; it's that most teams never pause to ask, "What could go wrong?"

A pre-mortem flips the script. Instead of waiting for a project to fail and conducting a post-mortem, a pre-mortem gathers stakeholders before work begins to imagine what failure would look like and then work backward to prevent it. It's a deceptively simple framework that surfaces risks early, builds alignment, and gives every voice in the room permission to raise concerns without fear.

In this session, you'll learn the full pre-mortem framework through two hands-on experiences. First, we'll walk through a guided pre-mortem together using a real case study, so you can see each step in action: imagining failure, brainstorming causes, categorizing and prioritizing risks, and building mitigation strategies. Then, you'll apply the framework to your own work. Working in small groups or individually, you'll run a mini pre-mortem on a real challenge you're facing in your job and get feedback from your peers.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why pre-mortems are a powerful complement to traditional project planning and how they reduce risk before it materializes
• How to facilitate a pre-mortem session that surfaces honest input and builds trust with stakeholders at all levels
• How to categorize and prioritize risks based on likelihood and impact so your team focuses energy where it matters most
• How to build actionable mitigation plans that address both prevention and response
• Techniques to create psychological safety so participants feel empowered to voice concerns openly

This session is designed for anyone who works on or leads projects, regardless of whether they've encountered pre-mortems before. Some familiarity with project or product management concepts (like timelines, stakeholders, and risk) is helpful for context, but not required. The framework itself is intuitive and accessible, and the hands-on activities are designed to meet participants wherever they are in their experience level.