Pre-Mortem Meeting

## Pre-mortem Analysis for Project Picasso

Date: September 4, 2024

Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Location: Conference Room B, HQ Building / Virtual Meeting Link: [Zoom Link]

Facilitator: Emily Paquette

Attendees:

- John Doe (Project Manager)
- Sarah Lee (Lead Developer)
- Michael Smith (QA Lead)
- Rachel Adams (Marketing Head)
- Tom Blake (Financial Analyst)

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### Introduction

- **Objective:** The goal of this Pre-mortem meeting is to identify potential risks and challenges that could lead to the failure of Project Picasso. By recognizing these risks early, we want to develop strategies to mitigate them and ensure the project's success.
- **Agenda Overview:** The meeting will include an introduction to the project's scope, discussion on an hypothetical failure scenario, individual brainstorming, group discussion, risk prioritization, and the development of mitigation strategies.

### Project Overview

- **Project Scope:** Project Picasso is designed to develop a new mobile app to better streamline our customer service operations. Our objectives include optimizing response times, improving customer satisfaction, and integrating AI assist for support features. Main deliverables include the app's MVP, user testing reports, and the final product launch.
- **Timeline:**
    - Phase 1 (Design): September 2024 - October 2024
    - Phase 2 (Development): November 2024 - January 2025
    - Phase 3 (Testing): February 2025 - March 2025
    - Final Launch: April 2025

### Imagining the Failure

- **Scenario Hypotheses:**
    - Participants will imagine that Project Picasso has failed.
    - **Hypothetical Scenario:** It is now April 2025, and the app launch has been a disaster. Customer feedback is mostly negative, the app has frequent crashes, and important features are missing. Why did it fail?
- **Individual Brainstorming:** Participants will have 15 minutes to list potential reasons for the project's failure, considering factors like technical challenges, intra-team problems, and market misalignment.

### Group Discussion

- **Sharing Insights:** Each participant will share the risks and potential points of failure they have identified.
- **Categorizing Risks:** We will group similar risks together, such as technical risks, market risks, and team-related risks, to identify common categories.

### Prioritization

- **Risk Impact and Likelihood:** We will examine and rate each risk based on its potential impact on the project and the likelihood of it occurring.
- **Main Risks Identification:** We will prioritize the top 5 risks that need immediate attention.

### Mitigation Strategies

- **Develop Solutions:**
    - For each of the top 5 risks, we will brainstorm potential management strategies, such as implementing additional testing phases or improving market research.
- **Assign Responsibilities:**
    - Assign team members to oversee the implementation of each mitigation plan, ensuring accountability.
- **Set Deadlines:**
    - Set clear deadlines for implementing these strategies, aligned with the project timeline.

### Review and Respond

- **Recap Main Points:** Summarize the top risks, along with their mitigation strategies and team members responsible for it.
- **Action Items:** Review the action items, ensuring each has an assigned responsibility and deadline.
- **Next Steps:** Outline the next steps, including follow-up meetings to track the implementation of mitigation strategies.

### Closing Remarks

- **Final Thoughts:** Solicit concluding comments or questions from attendees.
- **Thank You:** Thank everyone for their participation and input in safeguarding the success of Project Picasso.