<!-- Failure pre-mortem · from Chapter 07 of The Product 360 Handbook -->

# Failure pre-mortem · [Initiative] · [Date]

**Facilitator:** [name]   **Participants:** [product trio, security, support, sales or partner lead, others]

## The premise
It is [date, 6 to 12 months out]. [Initiative] has failed. Write down every plausible reason why, on your own, before anyone speaks.

## Prompts (use after silent writing, to find gaps)
- Market and product fit: did customers need it badly enough? Was the timing wrong?
- Unit economics: did cost to serve or pricing make it unsustainable?
- Process (Cagan's root causes): were ideas dictated by stakeholders? Did engineering or design arrive too late? Did all the risk sit at the end?
- Feature factory signs (Cutler): no measurement, deal-driven features, no tweaking after launch, hand-offs, invisible debt?
- Technical: compatibility breaks, reliability, security review, data residency, cost at scale?

## Raw reasons
| # | Reason | Raised by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | | |

## Ranked risks
| Rank | Failure story | Likelihood (H/M/L) | Damage (H/M/L) | Early-warning signal | Mitigation | Owner | Review date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | | | | | |
| 2 | | | | | | | |
| 3 | | | | | | | |

## Changes to the plan
1.
2.

## Revisit
At each milestone: which early-warning signals have moved?