# 🛠️ Project: Build a Decision Brief with Pre-Mortem and Review Plan

By Better Wise

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In the last lesson you separated process from outcome: judge a decision by the reasoning available when you made it, not by how it happened to land. This project turns that idea into an artifact you can hand to a skeptical colleague.

Why bother writing it down? Because a decision that lives only in your head cannot be reviewed. Once it is on one page, your assumptions become falsifiable, your confidence becomes gradeable, and your future self can tell the difference between bad luck and bad reasoning.

Your task: take one real, consequential choice you are facing now and produce a one-page decision brief plus a scheduled review.

## What You Are Building

One page. Seven fields. An evidence appendix that can be as long as you like. Dated, versioned, signed by the person who owns the call.

We will use a running example throughout: a four-person design studio deciding whether to hire its first junior designer or keep subcontracting overflow work. Swap in your own choice, but keep the shape.

```mermaid
flowchart TD
  A["🧭<br/>Decision statement"] --> B["🎯<br/>Goals and bar"]
  B --> C["📊<br/>Options and evidence"]
  C --> D["🔍<br/>Pre-mortem"]
  D --> E["✍️<br/>Commit line"]
  E --> F["🔁<br/>Review plan"]
```

Notice the order: the pre-mortem runs before the commit line, and the review plan is written before the decision is announced. That sequencing is the whole point.

## In this lesson

- Four Sittings of About Fifteen Minutes
- How You Know the Brief Is Done
- What the Page Buys You


---

## Contents

Part of [🧭 Decision-Making and Autonomy: Trust Your Judgment in the Age of AI](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai.md)

- **🧩 Frame the Decision and Set the Bar**
  - [🔍 Name the Real Decision with Problem Framing](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/name-the-real-decision-with-problem-framing.md)
  - [🎯 Goals, Constraints, and Success Criteria](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/goals-constraints-and-success-criteria.md) (sign-in required)
  - [⚖️ Facts vs Preferences: What Counts as Evidence](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/facts-vs-preferences-what-counts-as-evidence.md)
  - [✅ Checkpoint: Framing and Evidence Sorting](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/checkpoint-framing-and-evidence-sorting.md)
- **🧪 Compare and Stress-Test the Options**
  - [🔀 Opportunity Cost and Side-by-Side Comparison](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/opportunity-cost-and-side-by-side-comparison.md)
  - [🚨 Cognitive Biases and the Pre-Mortem](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/cognitive-biases-and-the-pre-mortem.md)
  - [⏱️ Reversibility, Decision Speed, and Calibrated Confidence](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/reversibility-decision-speed-and-calibrated-confidence.md)
  - [✅ Checkpoint: Choosing Under Uncertainty](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/checkpoint-choosing-under-uncertainty.md)
- **🔁 Use AI, Decide, and Review the Outcome**
  - [🤖 AI as a Question Generator, Not an Authority](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/ai-as-question-generator-not-an-authority.md)
  - [📋 Post-Decision Reviews: Process Over Outcome](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/post-decision-reviews-process-over-outcome.md)
  - [🛠️ Project: Build a Decision Brief with Pre-Mortem and Review Plan](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/project-build-decision-brief-with-premortem-and-review-plan.md) (premium content) — this lesson
  - [✅ Checkpoint: AI Use and Decision Review](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/checkpoint-ai-use-and-decision-review.md) (premium content)
- [Course cheatsheet](https://everwise.study/courses/decision-making-and-autonomy-trust-your-judgment-in-the-age-of-ai/cheatsheet.md) (premium content)