Pre-Mortem Risk Analysis Expert

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.