Pre-mortem risk analysis

Find plan vulnerabilities before resource commitment

When pre-validating any plan that requires resource commitment or board/investor presentation

• · Plan description with assumptions, timeline, dependencies

• · Challenge report with vulnerability map, dependency chain, kill switches

• · Plan has explicit assumptions (market, execution, customer, competitive, financial, dependency)
• · Sufficient detail to extract assumptions

• · Assumptions rated by confidence but impact not assessed
• · Dependency chain breaks identified but reversibility not tested
• · Kill switches defined too late (12-month decision, not 30-60 day)
• · Plan killed instead of hardened

• · Assumption confidence × impact matrix identifies vulnerabilities
• · Reversibility assessment (can you pivot or is money already spent?)
• · Kill switch definitions at 30/60/90 days
• · Explicit contingency planning
• · Pattern-specific challenges (product roadmap, GTM, hiring, fundraising)