How to avoid problems before they happen

Defining your problems, helps you prepare and avoid them

4 min readNov 4, 2020

All I want to know is how this project will fail, so I can avoid doing that #HoskWisdom

Project plans have goals, milestones and deliverables. They have optimistic paths into the future and run into trouble when the inevitable problems jump up and smash you in the face.

Predict your potential problems and you can resolve them before they become problems. Focus on what might go wrong and you can create plans to prepare for it. Do your thinking before the event when you have time and you will have the answers ready for when you have to act.

Mike Tyson warns of the danger of project plans

“Everyone has a plan, until you are punched in the face” — Mike Tyson

Predict your problems

The best person to predict the problems that might occur on the project you are working on, is the team working on the project. There are common problems, but each project can create completely new problems.

A popular method to predict problems is to perform a premortem, like a post mortem but before the death of your project 🙂

Premortems are effective because no one is to blame for potential problems, it encourages people to raise potential problems. Premortems can be more effective than post mortems because in a post mortem people are being defensive and protecting themselves rather than diagnosing the actual causes of the problems. Post Mortems can suffer from people rewriting history to support their actions and justify their actions.

Premortem’s help you find potential sources of failure and give you a chance to resolve small problems before they become big problems.

A premortem could start