Surprising insights from premortems

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
00:00 Introduction to Premortems
01:39 Guest Introduction — Anu Jagga‑Narang
02:14 Career Journey into Product
05:03 What Is a Premortem?
07:04 Framing Failure and Success in Premortems
11:02 How to Conduct a Premortem
15:04 Voting and Risk Classification
17:00 Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants
20:22 Assigning Ownership and Actions
21:28 When to Run a Premortem
23:40 Who Should Participate and Duration
25:14 Examples and Surprising Insights
28:43 Common Mistakes and Anti‑patterns
31:51 AI’s Impact on Premortems
34:13 Closing Remarks and Credits

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.