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pre-mortem

Pre-mortem risk analysis expert that classifies risks as Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants to surface launch-blocking issues before they happen.

personAuthor: jakexiaohubgithub
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Pre-Mortem Risk Analysis Expert

Overview

A pre-mortem is a prospective hindsight exercise: imagine that your product has launched and failed, then work backward to identify why. This skill uses the Tiger / Paper Tiger / Elephant classification to categorize risks by type and urgency, ensuring launch-blocking issues are addressed before launch while avoiding wasted effort on unlikely risks.

Core Capabilities

  • Prospective hindsight framing — "It is 14 days after launch, and we failed. Why?" surfaces specific, honest risks.
  • Tiger / Paper Tiger / Elephant classification — separate real evidenced risks (Tigers) from anxiety (Paper Tigers) and unspoken concerns (Elephants).
  • Urgency triage — tag each Tiger Launch-Blocking, Fast-Follow, or Track with owner and decision date.
  • 6-phase facilitation — scene-setting, silent generation, cluster, classify, mitigate, address elephants in 60-90 minutes.
  • Automated categorization — risk_categorizer.py summarizes distribution and flags elephants needing escalation.

When to Use

  • Before committing significant resources to build (post-ideation, post-validation).
  • Before a major launch, migration, or architectural change.
  • When the team has "a bad feeling" they cannot articulate.
  • When stakeholder confidence is high and you need to stress-test it.

Clarify First

Before running the pre-mortem, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:

  • [ ] The thing being stress-tested — the specific launch/build/migration that "failed 14 days after launch" (anchors the prospective-hindsight framing)
  • [ ] Failure horizon — the date/milestone you imagine looking back from (a vague horizon produces vague risks)
  • [ ] Who's in the room — the 4-8 participants and whether psychological safety exists (elephants only surface with candor and the right people)

Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the artifact.

Quick Start

python3 scripts/risk_categorizer.py --demo            # built-in sample (7 risks)
python3 scripts/risk_categorizer.py input.json        # categorize your risks
python3 scripts/risk_categorizer.py input.json --format json

Each risk needs description, category (tiger/paper_tiger/elephant), evidence, and urgency (launch_blocking/fast_follow/track) for tigers. Document the session with assets/pre_mortem_template.md.

References

Load the reference that matches the task — keep this file lean and pull detail on demand:

  • references/methodology-and-tools.md — the thought experiment, full Tiger/Paper Tiger/Elephant classification with examples, urgency table, the 6-phase facilitation script, risk_categorizer.py usage and flags, output formats, troubleshooting, success criteria, and bibliography. Read when running or scripting a session.
  • references/pre-mortem-guide.md — Gary Klein's origin and why pre-mortems work, when (and when not) to run one, deep classification criteria across domains, the facilitation timeline, and a worked SaaS launch example. Read for the theory and a full example.
  • references/red-flags.md — 12 anti-patterns (mitigation theater, groupthink, vague risks, over-mitigated elephants, late pre-mortems, missing owners) with bad/good examples and one-line checks. Read before sharing pre-mortem output.

Scope & Limitations

In Scope: prospective hindsight using the "14 days after launch failure" framing; Tiger / Paper Tiger / Elephant classification with urgency levels; automated elephant escalation detection; risk registry generation; facilitation methodology for in-person and remote teams.

Out of Scope: ongoing risk management and tracking (see senior-pm/risk_matrix_analyzer.py); quantitative probability/impact scoring (senior-pm/); product discovery and hypothesis validation (brainstorm-experiments/); technical architecture risk assessment (engineering/ skills).

Important Caveats: most effective with 4-8 participants; the elephant escalation keyword check is a heuristic; pre-mortems complement, not replace, assumption mapping (identify-assumptions/); psychological safety is a prerequisite.

Integration Points

| Integration | Direction | Description | |------------|-----------|-------------| | brainstorm-ideas/ | Receives from | Ideas that passed initial validation are subject to pre-mortem before full build | | brainstorm-experiments/ | Receives from | Post-experiment, pre-mortem stress-tests the build decision | | identify-assumptions/ | Bidirectional | Launch-blocking tigers may surface new assumptions; elephants often reveal avoided assumptions | | execution/create-prd/ | Feeds into | Tiger mitigations become PRD risk sections and assumption validation plans | | senior-pm/ | Feeds into | Launch-blocking tigers escalate into portfolio risk registers via risk_matrix_analyzer.py | | scrum-master/ | Feeds into | Fast-follow tigers become sprint backlog items with mitigation-focused stories |