A pre-mortem on post-mortems

For future projects to improve, it is necessary to learn lessons from previous projects. The majority of software development methodologies recommend a review of the project to examine what worked and what needs improvement. These reviews are commonly referred to as project postmortems (although, technically, a review occurs during a project while a post-mortem occurs on project completion). Existing research into postmortems has found problems with the actual process itself and the use of the output from the process - the lessons learned. Rather than further examining the process itself, this research examines project post-mortems before the event - it is an examination of the beliefs and attitudes that project members have about post-mortems. These attitudes can ultimately reduce the effectiveness of a post-mortem, even before it has begun. It is somewhat paradoxical that team members initially espoused positive views about post-mortems in a survey, yet further examination of key informants showed that these espoused views did not translate into reality. It is shown how groupthink can help to forge negative beliefs and attitudes about postmortems that will have a detrimental affect on the process itself.