Most of what goes wrong in the project always goes wrong in the planning phase. Almost everything that goes wrong can be linked back to something that happened or didn’t happen during this planning/design phase.
Yet, most projects have design validations, they have full risk assessments. We have figured out, there is a configuration missing in project management. It is the Pre-Mortems.
A Project Pre-Mortem can be described as finding all the ways in which this project can and will fail. The team gathers and asks one question; “how will this project go wrong? What will delay this project? What will make it go beyond budget? Beyond scope?”
A great project Pre-Mortem is such an eye-opener, it is the equivalent of ethical hacking but for projects. Because when you ask this question about a project, you are able to notice your blind spots, the critical things you are missing. You get to realise that there is this one stakeholder you have ignored. That there is this element of design you have overlooked. I often advise a project manager to have this Pre-Mortem thinking every time they are reviewing a project, approaching a new stage, just keep doing this Pre-Mortem.
The common thing in projects is the post-mortem or lessons learned. But the post-mortem won’t tell you much about the next project you will handle. Projects are unique. Each project happens in a unique context. All that you really need is the Pre-Mortem.
Conduct as many project Pre-Mortems as possible. If you can know how you will fail and control for that, you need not worry about the project success.