In this episode, Lily Smith and Randy Silver host Anu Jagga-Narang, a product evangelist at AT&T, to explore premortems — a powerful technique for anticipating product failure before launch. Anu explains how premortems use prospective hindsight to uncover risks early, surface assumptions teams are reluctant to voice, and improve decision quality.
The conversation covers practical steps for running premortems, risk classification using tigers, paper tigers and elephants, common pitfalls, and when to revisit the exercise as products evolve. They also examine how emerging AI capabilities influence product risk management — increasing the need for thoughtful planning rather than replacing human insight.
This discussion offers product leaders a framework to strengthen strategic thinking, foster psychological safety and equip teams to build with confidence and clarity.
Chapters
Key Takeaways
Premortems shift focus from execution certainty to better decision quality. Anu defines premortems as structured exercises in "prospective hindsight", helping teams assume failure and work backwards to reveal hidden risks and weak assumptions.
Premortems create psychological safety. By imagining failure in advance, teams surface issues they might otherwise avoid discussing, tackling overconfidence and optimism bias.
Classifying risk sharpens prioritisation. The tigers, paper tigers and elephants framework helps teams distinguish between clear threats, perceived but controlled risks, and overlooked issues that need attention.
Premortems are not one-off rituals. Run them before major launches, when assumptions shift, midway through delivery, or when signals show misalignment. Revisiting them ensures continued learning and alignment.
Practical structure matters. Effective sessions include a kickoff with clear objectives, anonymous contribution where appropriate, descriptive inputs rather than bullet points, and disciplined voting to highlight real risks.
Ownership and action plans are essential. Identifying risk is only the first step — assigning owners and defining tangible next steps turns insights into mitigation.
Avoid common anti-patterns. Unrestricted voting, treating all risks equally, using premortems as a venting ground, and failing to act on insights undermine the value of the exercise.
AI enhances tooling but not the core human work. AI can help consolidate themes, reduce clerical overhead, and track mitigation plans, but it cannot create psychological safety or replace human judgement.
