Coaching practices for How to Avoid Project Failure
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Avoid Project Failure, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’m about to commit to this timeline and on paper it all looks fine, but I have a nagging feeling I’m glossing over the ways it could go sideways because admitting them now feels like talking myself out of it before I’ve even started.
- We’re about to kick this off and everyone’s upbeat, but I have a quiet feeling there are ways this falls apart that nobody wants to say out loud while we’re all still excited.
- I’m all-in on this plan and can barely make myself imagine it going wrong
- When I ask myself "what could go wrong with this plan," I either draw a blank or come up with one vague worry
- After spending an hour imagining all the ways this could fail, I’ve talked myself right out of even starting
Practices that may help
- Run a premortem before committing
Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
The Planning Fallacy — Why Your Estimates Are Always Wrong - Run a pre-mortem before you start
Before a project begins, ask: assume it failed — what went wrong?
Hindsight Bias: Why Everything Seems Obvious in Retrospect - Run a pre-mortem from the outside-view perspective
Imagine the project has failed — then ask which base-rate failure type caused it.
The Outside View - Run the basic pre-mortem
Assume the plan failed, then have everyone write down why.
The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed - Pair the pre-mortem with a clear success vision
Balance failure analysis with an equally concrete picture of what success requires.
The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed - The premortem (imagine the project already failed)
Before starting, assume the plan has already failed and ask why — then fix it now.
Premeditatio Malorum, in Depth - State the goal, then invert it
Ask "what would guarantee I fail at this?" before asking how to succeed.
Inversion: Solve Problems Backward - Use reverse brainstorming to find failure modes
Ask "how would we make this fail?" instead of "how do we make this succeed?"
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Write reasons independently before discussing
Everyone records failure causes alone first, so the room doesn’t converge too soon.
The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed - Run a pre-mortem before committing to a plan
Imagine the plan has already failed and ask what went wrong.
Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See
Related concerns
- When Red Teaming Pre Mortem Red Team
Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
Combine the pre-mortem with red team pressure
- How To Plan For Failure
Assume the plan failed, then have everyone write down why.
Run the basic pre-mortem
- Imagine Failure Before Starting
Balance failure analysis with an equally concrete picture of what success requires.
Pair the pre-mortem with a clear success vision
- Imagine Project Failed
A pre-mortem, developed by psychologist Gary Klein, has a team imagine that a plan has already failed and then work backward to explain why — before any work begins. The technique exploits "prospective hindsight": research found that imagining an outcome as a certainty makes people generate more, and more specific, reasons for it, surfacing risks that ordinary risk assessment misses.
- Planning Premortem
A pre-mortem, developed by psychologist Gary Klein, has a team imagine that a plan has already failed and then work backward to explain why — before any work begins. The technique exploits "prospective hindsight": research found that imagining an outcome as a certainty makes people generate more, and more specific, reasons for it, surfacing risks that ordinary risk assessment misses.
- Premortem Analysis
A pre-mortem, developed by psychologist Gary Klein, has a team imagine that a plan has already failed and then work backward to explain why — before any work begins. The technique exploits "prospective hindsight": research found that imagining an outcome as a certainty makes people generate more, and more specific, reasons for it, surfacing risks that ordinary risk assessment misses.
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