Counterfactuals
A counterfactual is an alternate world: if churn did not fall, if the vendor missed the SLA, if the hire left in a year. You score that world too.
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Assume it failed, then write the history
A pre-mortem asks the team to imagine it is a year later and the project is a disaster, then to write that history before you commit.
What it means
People protect the idea in the room. They are more honest when the failure is already stipulated. The method is cheap if you actually change the plan.
Why it matters
Post-mortems come too late. Pre-mortems are how you spend a few hours instead of a year.
How to apply it
Run the exercise, convert stories into claims and evidence, and score residual risk. Then decide whether to proceed.
A common trap
Doing a pre-mortem as a workshop icebreaker and filing the notes.
How Argumont uses this
Turn pre-mortem stories into claims the challenger and risk roles can score. If a failure mode is load-bearing, it should change confidence.
Related pages
Evaluate risk
Risk work is a decision among mitigate, transfer, accept, and avoid. Argumont keeps residual risk on the page so a funded control cannot pretend to have closed ...
Risk management
A risk register lists worries. A decision chooses a treatment. Argumont compares mitigation, transfer, acceptance, and avoidance with residual risk left visible...
Adversarial reasoning
Adversarial reasoning is not being difficult in a meeting. It is assigning someone, or a model, the job of breaking the story so you do not ship a hole.
Learn
These articles explain methods Argumont uses in the product. They are education, not a pile of keyword stubs, and not fake news with invented dates.
Run a pre-mortem in Argumont
Argumont challenges assumptions, researches evidence, compares competing approaches, and identifies the strongest decision.
Run a pre-mortem in Argumont