Pre-mortems happen at the beginning of a project, and are used imagine what might happen. They are a good way to suss out what could go wrong down the road, and identify assumptions that need to be tested ([[Test the riskiest assumptions first]]). > A pre-mortem encourages you to ask, "Imagine it's six months in the future; your product or initiative launched, and it was a complete failure. What went wrong?" > —[[Teresa Torres]], *[[Torres - Continuous Discovery Habits|Continuous Discovery Habits]]* (page 155) Torres emphasizes it is critical to phrase this question as if the outcome is certain. It's not *if* it went wrong, but *why* did it go wrong?