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Runs a pre-mortem risk analysis: assume the project has failed, then work backward to identify and mitigate risks before they occur.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/b00t:pre-mortemThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
The pre-mortem (coined by Gary Klein) is a prospective failure analysis technique. Before starting a project, assume it has catastrophically failed. Ask: "It is 6 months from now. This project failed completely. Why?" List every plausible cause and rank by likelihood × impact. This technique works because prospective hindsight activates different reasoning than standard risk analysis — people a...
The pre-mortem (coined by Gary Klein) is a prospective failure analysis technique. Before starting a project, assume it has catastrophically failed. Ask: "It is 6 months from now. This project failed completely. Why?" List every plausible cause and rank by likelihood × impact. This technique works because prospective hindsight activates different reasoning than standard risk analysis — people are more honest about failure causes when asked "why did it fail" vs "what might go wrong."
Steps: (1) State the goal clearly. (2) Fast-forward to failure. "It failed. What happened?" (3) List all causes — suppress optimism bias, allow pessimism. (4) For each top-3 cause, add a mitigation to the plan now.
Use pre-mortem before any significant project, feature launch, or deployment. It is especially valuable in high-stakes situations where optimism bias might cause teams to underweight tail risks.
npx claudepluginhub elasticdotventures/_b00t_ --plugin skill-document-understandingRuns a pre-mortem analysis: assumes a plan has already failed and reasons backward to surface concrete risks. Use before committing to major decisions or launches.
Facilitates pre-mortem analysis to identify project risks by imagining failure has occurred and working backward to causes. Useful for new projects, optimistic teams, or scope changes.
Use this skill when the user asks for a "pre-mortem", "failure analysis", "what could go wrong", "risks for this initiative", "stress test this plan", "anticipate failure", "what are we missing", or wants to proactively identify the ways a plan or initiative could fail before investing in it. Also use this skill before major launches or roadmap decisions. Do NOT use this skill for post-launch retrospectives — use lessons-learned capture for that.