Pre-Mortem
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
A planning exercise where a team imagines that a project has already failed and works backward to identify plausible causes in advance. It is used to surface hidden risks before execution begins.
In plain English: A planning exercise where people imagine failure first so they can prevent it.
Example: "The pre-mortem forced us to admit that vendor approval was the real schedule risk, not implementation speed."