# Pre mortem on a plan

> Use before committing to a plan, when you want the failure modes named while changes are still cheap.

## Vor dem Start ausfüllen

- `{{PLAN}}`
- `{{KEY_ASSUMPTIONS}}`
- `{{PAST_FAILURES}}`
- `{{DELIVERY_TEAM}}`

## Prompt

```
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.
```

## So wird das Ergebnis besser

- Run it before approval; afterwards people defend the plan instead of attacking it properly.
- The quiet abandonment story is the one that actually happens, so do not let anyone cut it.
- Put the early signals into a monthly check or the pre mortem becomes a document nobody reopens.

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Aus der QuQi-Prompt-Bibliothek - https://www.quqi.io/de/prompts/strategy-premortem-session