Project Management Tip: The Pre-Mortem đź’€
How many projects have you been involved in where a problem has surfaced, and you said or thought, if we had done ........, this wouldn't have happened.
It's very rare, or at least in most cases, that a problem will occur, and you say there was absolutely nothing we could have done about that. No matter how much preparation, questions asked, or planning sessions were held, this wouldn't have been avoided.
But if you ask enough questions on how it could have been caught, there will nearly always be an opportunity to have caught it if you're honest with yourself.
Most problems on projects are due to a lack of education/shared understanding of:
- The process
- Roles and responsibilities
- Project tool
- Deliverables
- Outcomes needed.
The reason for these problems is the need for more time spent on educating all those involved so you have that shared understanding, and once you're all aligned, everything gets easier.
The challenge is that often there isn't enough time to educate everyone involved and then validate they understand what this means for them.
To help, you can run a pre-mortem workshop.
This will only fix some of the potential problems on a project, but you'll catch many of them far earlier than we would if you don't run one.
A pre-mortem workshop essentially asks one question:
What could go wrong?
This question is rarely asked or not asked in the right way; the wrong way is here's a risk log, our assumptions, and the client's responsibilities written in an SOW.
Most of which is shared without a conversation.
In a pre-mortem workshop, you mix education through conversation and showing. So you look at what the process is, the tools you use, and the deliverables you create, to name a few, whilst asking questions like:
- What could go wrong?
- Have you done this before?
- Who else might get involved or want to know about this?
- What happens if you are not around (e.g, the approver)
- What do we do if this presentation of a deliverable doesn't go well with your stakeholders?
You want to go through lots of worst-case scenarios as well as go deeper on how you'll work together.
It's not easy talking about worst-case scenarios, but the point is, that these have yet to happen, and they're less likely to happen if you talk about them now and put plans in place to prevent them.
If you cover your eyes and ears and hope for the best because you want to sound all positive pre-project, then they're more likely to happen.
So be brave and ask the tough questions.
What are the benefits of doing this?
Well, you'll catch potential problems early and have a shared plan in place if they do.
If a problem does occur, then as you've already discussed it, you're far more likely to work collaboratively to fix it rather than blame each other.
Having tough conversations early really helps with relationship building with new teams, as you're already working as a team.
It builds confidence in you as a project manager as you're taking a leadership role.
The great thing about pre-mortems is that you can test them in different ways. The most powerful and effective way is a full team workshop, but you can also run them in these scenarios.
- A 121 between a Project Manager and an Account Manager.
- 121 between you and your client
- With your team only, so no stakeholders or clients
- A stakeholder session only
All of these can provide value for your project and catch those problems early.
The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities - Steven Covey
