Mitigate towards dangers that matter with this Pre-Mortem format
Pre-Mortems are among the many most underused instruments in a Product Supervisor’s and crew’s toolkit.
In contrast to Put up-Mortems, which most individuals are accustomed to, quite than ready till the tip when every little thing has already gone unsuitable. A Pre-Mortem is completed at first of a challenge or merchandise of labor to mitigate towards avoidable points.
In different phrases, quite than retrospectively trying again at what didn’t go so nicely and what we’d do in another way subsequent time (autopsy), we purpose to preempt the issues which may go unsuitable and put measures in place on how we’d forestall them (pre-mortem).
Throughout a Pre-Mortem, the crew and related events will brainstorm all of the dangers and issues that would go unsuitable. They then work backwards to establish methods through which the crew may mitigate them from occurring.
That is my typical run sheet for facilitating a pre-mortem.
Step 1: Setting the scene
I like to start out pre-mortems by setting the scene. I’ll ask the contributors to challenge themselves into the long run, and our challenge or merchandise of labor has gone horribly unsuitable!
I then ask them to start eager about among the causes for this going unsuitable.
I typically prefer to make this vivid. I’ll sometimes paint an image similar to: “It’s August the twentieth, and we’ve missed the market window. A serious competitor has launched the same product and has gained the first-mover benefit by means of being featured on right now’s information”
Step 2: Brainstorm what may go unsuitable
Now that we’ve set the scene and gotten the contributors in the correct mind set. The following step in a pre-mortem is to establish all of the issues that we imagine may go unsuitable.
This step could be so simple as a bunch brainstorming session, or how I prefer to facilitate it, is thru silent brainstorming.
Silent brainstorming is the place you get every participant to jot down down their ideas individually earlier than sharing and grouping related themes.
The benefit of silent brainstorming is avoiding bias and groupthink. You additionally get top quality and a wider vary of concepts.
“Analysis exhibits that embracing silence throughout a brainstorm helps groups produce considerably extra — and higher-quality — concepts” — HBR
Step 3: Mapping your dangers
When you’ve recognized all of the issues which may go unsuitable, the subsequent is to prioritise them and determine on actions to mitigate them from occurring.
A framework I like to make use of to facilitate Pre-Mortems is that this matrix.
It is a danger administration matrix that maps dangers in accordance with their chance of occurring and their influence.
The x-axis represents the influence — from low influence to excessive. And the Y-axis represents chance — once more from excessive chance to low chance of occurring.
As a part of this step, you’ll need to map your dangers onto this matrix.
This isn’t presupposed to be a precise science and shouldn’t be a pricey exercise. Quite purpose to plot your dangers relative to one another when it comes to chance of occurring and influence.
Step 4: Decide actions to mitigate
When you’ve mapped out your dangers onto this matrix the subsequent step is to find out actions to mitigate towards them.
The great thing about this matrix is that every quadrant maps properly to a viable plan of action primarily based on the danger’s chance of occurring and the influence if it did.
Excessive Probability + Excessive Impression = Keep away from
Low Probability + Excessive Impression = Cut back or exploit
Excessive Probability + Low Impression = Share or Switch
Low Probability + Low Impression = Settle for
Keep away from:
Dangers within the ‘keep away from’ part are your greatest dangers.
They’re excessive influence and excessive chance of occurring and subsequently ought to be prevented in any respect prices.
Talk about methods in which you’ll be able to keep away from these dangers from occurring — What measures may you be capable to put in place to keep away from this danger altogether?
Cut back or Exploit:
Your subsequent precedence are your excessive influence however low chance dangers.
For these dangers, you need to discover methods to cut back the influence or exploit them to achieve a disproportionately useful final result relative to the danger concerned.
While avoiding these dangers altogether is right, we need to be weary of investing too closely in mitigating these dangers as the trouble in doing so is perhaps disproportionate to the danger they current given their low chance. Subsequently we search to cut back the influence if it did happen.
Share or Switch:
Dangers which have a excessive chance however a low influence are ones the place you possibly can search for methods to both switch the danger to a different occasion or share it with them.
This reduces the trouble in mitigating the danger making it proportionate to the dimensions.
Choices may embody delegating duties to a different crew to share or switch the danger to them. The crew that you just switch it to may need distinctive experience or assets accessible to them to raised mitigate towards the danger.
One other is perhaps to carry on third events that may eat the danger. For instance, you could not need to should handle the safety dangers related to fee processing, thus quite than constructing it your self you buy a funds supplier, like Stripe.
Settle for:
Lastly, not all dangers are price mitigating towards.
These with a low chance of occurring and a low influence in the event that they do eventuate usually outweigh the prices to mitigate towards them. It’s subsequently usually extra acceptable to simply accept these dangers and monitor them.
Pre-Mortems are an underutilized software for product managers and groups to mitigate dangers earlier than they occur.
Quite than ready till the tip of a challenge to mirror and enhance, pre-mortems permit us to preempt and keep away from dangers earlier than they even occur.
We all know that issues don’t all the time go in accordance with plan, and thru expertise, we be taught to anticipate the everyday issues that can journey us up. Via a well-facilitated pre-mortem we will unearth these concepts and give you actions proper at first of a chunk of labor.
Use the danger matrix to prioritize your dangers primarily based on their chance of occurring and influence, in addition to use it to information your actions by means of both
- Keep away from
- Cut back
- Share/Switch
- or Settle for
📣 FYI: When you received worth type this, I’m additionally launching a web based studying platform with deep dives into particular PM subjects like this over at productpathways.com.
You may see what the programs can be like over on Product Pathways YouTube channel right here, the place I can be posting common movies about Product Administration.
