About this episode
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 Premortems01:39 Guest Introduction — Anu Jagga?Narang02:14 Career Journey into Product05:03 What Is a Premortem?07:04 Framing Failure and Success in Premortems11:02 How to Conduct a Premortem15:04 Voting and Risk Classification17:00 Tigers, Paper Tigers, and Elephants20:22 Assigning Ownership and Actions21:28 When to Run a Premortem23:40 Who Should Participate and Duration25:14 Examples and Surprising Insights28:43 Common Mistakes and Anti?patterns31:51 AI’s Impact on Premortems34:13 Closing Remarks and CreditsOur HostsLily 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 Produ
