Premortem template

What if you could anticipate how a project might fail before you even kick it off? A project premortem helps your team imagine potential setbacks in advance so you can build a plan to prevent them. Below, you'll learn what a premortem is, how to run one, and how to use a free template to make the process repeatable.

What is a project premortem?

A project premortem is a brainstorming exercise your team conducts before a project begins to imagine how it could fail, then uses those insights to plan for risks in advance. A premortem template gives you a reusable structure for running this exercise, so your team can capture risks, prioritize them, and assign action items in one place.

Why use a premortem template?

Without a template, premortems can feel unstructured and hard to repeat. A template in a collaborative work management tool gives your team a shared space to brainstorm in real time and keeps every premortem consistent from project to project.

When to conduct a premortem

Timing matters when it comes to premortems. Run yours too early, and you won't have enough context; run it too late, and your team can't act on what they find. Here are the best moments to schedule one:

• After the project plan is drafted, but before work begins: This is the ideal window. Your team has enough context about scope, timeline, and goals to brainstorm realistic risks, and you still have time to adjust your plan.

• Before major milestones or launches: If your project has high-stakes phases, like a product launch or campaign go-live, consider running a focused premortem before those moments.

• After completing a post-mortem on a previous project: Lessons from a past project can fuel sharper thinking for your next premortem. Use what your team learned to ask better questions this time around.

• During sprint planning (for agile teams): A lightweight premortem at the start of each sprint can help you flag blockers before they slow down your work.

Who should participate in a premortem?

A premortem works best when you bring together people with different perspectives, since diverse viewpoints catch risks a smaller group might overlook. Here's who to include:

• Project manager or project lead: They facilitate the session and ensure the conversation stays focused and productive.

• Core team members: Anyone who will be doing the hands-on work brings practical insight into what could go wrong during day-to-day tasks.

• Cross-functional stakeholders: Representatives from other teams, such as design, engineering, or marketing, can spot dependencies and risks your core team might miss.

• Subject matter experts: If your project involves specialized areas, such as compliance, data security, or technical architecture, invite the people who know those areas best.

• Project sponsor or executive stakeholder: When relevant, including a sponsor can help your team think about risks from a strategic perspective.

As a general rule, keep your premortem group between five and 10 people. Large enough for diverse input, small enough for a focused conversation.

What's included in a premortem template?

Good premortem templates include all the key elements needed to run a successful premortem meeting. These include:

• Prework or prereads: It's important to provide context in a premortem meeting so that project team members can conduct their own mini-premortem analysis and bring those insights into the brainstorm.

• Meeting agenda: Sharing a meeting agenda in advance gives your team time both for individual brainstorming and analyzing the topics they're expected to discuss during the brainstorm.

• Brainstorming categories: There are two main things that you want your team to come up with during the premortem: potential future risks and potential future solutions to those risks.

• Likelihood of occurrence: For potential risks, this is a label or identifier that indicates the likelihood of the risk occurring. This can help you better prioritize and plan your project to minimize risk.

• Priority: This is the ranking of risks by order of importance to your project. Not all risks are created equally, so prioritizing can help your team focus on the issues that matter the most.

How to run a premortem meeting

Once you have your template and participants ready, follow these steps to run a productive premortem meeting:

1. Set the stage. Ask your team to imagine the project has already been completed, and it failed. This mental shift, called prospective hindsight, encourages more honest and creative thinking about potential risks.

2. Brainstorm individually. Give everyone five to 10 minutes to silently write down every reason the project could fail. Silent brainstorming prevents groupthink and gives quieter team members space to share their ideas.

3. Share and group similar risks. Go around the room and have each person share their risks, then group related items together. You'll likely see patterns, like multiple people flagging timeline concerns or resource gaps.

4. Vote and prioritize. Have your team vote on which risks are most likely and which would have the biggest negative effect. Focus on the top five to 10 risks.

5. Identify solutions and assign owners. For each high-priority risk, brainstorm ways to prevent or reduce it, then assign a specific owner and deadline. This is what turns your premortem from a brainstorm into a plan.

6. Update your project plan. Add your premortem insights directly to your project. In a work management tool like Asana, you can create tasks for each action item and track progress alongside the rest of your project work.

7. Revisit during the project. Check in on your identified risks at key milestones to see if any are materializing, and adjust your plan as needed.

Premortem example

To see how a premortem works in practice, imagine a marketing team preparing to launch a new product campaign. The project manager gathers the core team, a designer, a content writer, a paid media specialist, and a stakeholder from the product team for a 60-minute premortem meeting.

The scenario: "It's three months from now. Our product launch campaign has failed. What went wrong?"

After 10 minutes of silent brainstorming, the team surfaces risks like:

• The product team delays the feature release, throwing off the campaign timeline.

• Creative assets aren't approved in time because the review process involves too many stakeholders.

• The paid media budget gets cut mid-campaign due to a company-wide spending freeze.

• The messaging doesn't resonate with the target audience because user research wasn't completed.

The team votes and prioritizes the top risks, then maps each one to a concrete action:

Product team delays the feature release

• Action: Set up weekly check-ins with the product and add a two-week timeline buffer

• Owner: Project manager

Creative assets aren’t approved in time

• Action: Assign one approval owner with a 48-hour review window

• Owner: Design lead

Paid media budget gets cut mid-campaign

• Action: Prepare an organic-only contingency plan

• Owner: Paid media specialist

Messaging doesn’t resonate with the audience

• Action: Schedule user testing before launch

• Owner: Content writer

Each action item goes directly into the team's Asana project with owners, due dates, and dependencies clearly mapped. When the project kicks off, the team already has a plan for the challenges most likely to come their way.

Benefits of using a premortem template

Here are a few ways your team can benefit from using a premortem template:

• Provides consistency: Using a template ensures that everyone runs a premortem meeting in a similar manner. With consistent use, a premortem meeting becomes an integrated part of the planning process.

• Mitigates project risks: Practicing prospective hindsight means regularly anticipating potential failures. This prevents negative future outcomes from happening because your team is prepared for them.

• Encourages cross-collaboration before the project begins: When everyone on the project team completes a premortem exercise together, you can strengthen cross-functional collaboration and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Using a work management software like Asana can help teams connect in real time, so remote teams can brainstorm together.

• Creates psychological safety: A premortem gives every team member permission to voice concerns in a structured, blame-free setting. Instead of raising a red flag after work has started, your team addresses potential issues before they become real problems.

How to use this template in Asana

Asana makes it easy to turn your premortem brainstorm into an organized, actionable project. Here are the features and integrations that support your premortem process.

Integrated features

• Board View. Board View is a Kanban-style board that displays your project's information in columns. Columns are typically organized by work status (like To Do, Doing, and Done), but you can adjust column titles depending on your project needs. Track work as it moves through stages and get an at-a-glance insight into where your project stands.

• Custom fields. Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track, from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first.

• Adding tasks to multiple projects. The nature of work is cross-functional. Asana makes it easy to track and manage tasks across multiple projects, helping your team see tasks in context, view who's working on what, and keep tasks and team members connected.

• Project Brief. A project brief is a way to communicate important details and dates to your broader project team. Make sure your team can easily access your project brief by putting it in a central source of truth like Asana.

Recommended apps

• Google Workplace. Attach files directly to tasks in Asana using the Google Workplace file chooser built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach any My Drive file with just a few clicks.

• Jira. Create interactive, connected workflows between technical and business teams to increase real-time visibility into the product development process, all without leaving Asana. Quickly create Jira issues in Asana, so work flows seamlessly between business and technical teams at the right time.

• Figma. Teams use Figma to create user flows, wireframes, UI mocks, prototypes, and more. You can embed these designs in Asana, so your team can reference the latest design work alongside related project documents.

• Microsoft Teams. With the Microsoft Teams + Asana integration, you can search for and share the information you need without leaving Teams. Easily connect your Teams conversations to actionable items in Asana.

Start running premortems with your team

A premortem is one of the simplest ways to protect your project from avoidable setbacks. By bringing your team together to imagine what could go wrong, you build a stronger plan, surface hidden risks, and give everyone a voice in the process. Get started with a free premortem template in Asana and make risk planning a standard part of every project.

FAQs about premortem templates