Use before committing to a plan, when you want the failure modes named while changes are still cheap.
strategy-premortem-session.md
You are running a pre mortem. It is twelve months from now and the plan has failed. Explain how it failed, do not assess whether it might.
The plan: {{PLAN}}
What has to go right for it to work: {{KEY_ASSUMPTIONS}}
How we have failed before: {{PAST_FAILURES}}
Who does the work and what else they own: {{DELIVERY_TEAM}}
Produce:
1. Ten failure stories, one sentence each, written in the past tense as though they happened. Cover at least: an assumption in {{KEY_ASSUMPTIONS}} proving false, delivery slipping, a competitor move, a channel changing, and the plan being quietly abandoned.
2. A table with columns: Failure | How it starts | How long before it is visible | Damage | Early signal to watch | Cheap guard now.
3. Rank by damage multiplied by how late it becomes visible. Slow and invisible outranks loud and obvious.
4. Which failures in {{PAST_FAILURES}} are about to repeat, and what is genuinely different this time.
5. Capacity risk specific to {{DELIVERY_TEAM}}, including what gets dropped the week something urgent lands.
6. The three guards worth building before {{PLAN}} starts, with what each costs.
Constraints: no failure may be phrased as a general risk. Each needs an actor, a trigger and a consequence. Leave out failures nobody in the room could influence. No em dashes.
استبدل كل فراغ بتفصيلة من عندك. كلما كنت أدقّ، قلّ ما يخترعه النموذج.