Run a Pre-Mortem Before You Launch a New Offer

Optimism can hide the weak assumptions inside a new offer. Imagining the launch has already failed gives your team permission to find warning signs while there is still time to act.

This guide helps you create a practical pre-mortem with plausible failure modes, leading indicators, prevention actions, contingency triggers, and owners.

What you need

• The offer, audience, launch goal, timeline, budget, channels, capacity, and dependencies
• Known assumptions and constraints
• People responsible for sales, delivery, support, and money decisions

The workflow

1. Assume a specific failure

Use a concrete future statement such as the launch missed its goal, damaged trust, or overwhelmed delivery. Avoid vague pessimism.

2. Generate across the system

Consider customer demand, message, channel, sales, delivery, capacity, support, cash, legal, data, and reputation.

3. Rank by evidence and detectability

A dramatic risk is not automatically likely. Separate observed evidence, known assumptions, and speculative possibilities.

4. Create triggers and owners

Prevention without an owner or contingency without a trigger is only a concern list.

Copy this working prompt

Replace every bracketed field with verified information from your business. If you do not know something, write unknown instead of guessing.

Facilitate a pre-mortem for this business launch.

Offer, audience, and desired outcome:
[DESCRIBE]

Launch plan, timing, budget, and channels:
[DESCRIBE]

Sales, delivery, support, and operational capacity:
[DESCRIBE]

Known assumptions:
[LIST]

Known constraints and dependencies:
[LIST]

Approved risk tolerance or non-negotiables:
[LIST]

Imagine it is 90 days after launch and the initiative failed materially.

Create failure modes across demand, positioning, channel, sales, delivery, capacity, customer experience, cash, compliance, data, and reputation.

For each provide cause, evidence or assumption, likelihood, impact, earliest warning sign, prevention action, contingency trigger, contingency action, owner role, and decision deadline.

Then identify the five risks that deserve action before launch and the assumptions that need a test.

Do not invent market data, laws, costs, team capacity, customer demand, or certainty.

Run a second-pass review

The first output should not be the final answer. Use this challenge prompt to find weak evidence, hidden assumptions, or avoidable risk.

Challenge this pre-mortem for dramatic but unlikely risks, missing boring operational risks, duplicate failure modes, actions with no owner, and contingencies with no measurable trigger.

What good looks like

• Risks span the whole business system
• Evidence and assumptions are separate
• Top risks have owners and early signals

Review before you use it

• Did delivery and support participate, not only marketing?
• Are legal and financial issues reviewed by qualified people?
• Can the team name the trigger that changes the plan?

Privacy and judgment guardrails

• Remove passwords, payment details, private health information, and confidential customer data before pasting anything into an AI tool.
• Treat the output as a working draft. A person remains responsible for the decision, promise, price, and final send.
• Do not let AI invent customer quotes, financial figures, legal terms, capabilities, deadlines, or proof.

Your next action

Run a 45-minute team review and assign only the top five prevention actions before adding more launch tasks.

If your AI tool still lacks the context to do this well, first Use a stronger prompt structure for the review.