Pre-mortems: simulating failures before they happen (Chaos Engineering Lite for SMBs)

Pre-mortems—a proactive risk-identification technique where teams imagine a future failure has already occurred and work backward to uncover its causes—are a powerful, low-cost form of “Chaos Engineering Lite” perfectly suited for SMBs, labs, MROs, and export-focused businesses that can’t afford large-scale outages but lack the resources for full-blown chaos platforms like Gremlin or Chaos Monkey.

Unlike traditional postmortems (which happen after damage is done), pre-mortems are preventive, collaborative, and psychologically safe—they encourage candid discussion without blame, because the failure is hypothetical.

Why Pre-Mortems Matter for SMBs in Critical Sectors

In environments like aviation maintenance, ISO-certified testing labs, or export documentation systems:

• A single downtime event can invalidate certifications, delay shipments, or trigger regulatory scrutiny.

• Teams are small—often with single-point-of-failure roles.

• Budgets don’t allow for redundant systems, but process resilience is still achievable.

Pre-mortems let you stress-test your assumptions, dependencies, and recovery plans—without taking systems offline.

How to Run a Pre-Mortem (Practical Framework for SMBs)

Step 1: Set the Scene

“It’s 3 months from now. Our [LIMS/calibration server/export compliance portal] has been down for 8 hours. Clients are furious, an audit is scheduled tomorrow, and we’ve lost critical data. What went wrong?”

Step 2: Silent Brainstorming (5–10 mins)
Each team member writes down plausible causes individually. This avoids groupthink.

Step 3: Cluster & Prioritize
Group similar risks (e.g., “backup failed,” “unpatched vulnerability,” “only one person knew the restore process”).

Step 4: Build Mitigations
For top 3–5 risks, assign:

• Prevention actions (e.g., automate backup verification)

• Detection mechanisms (e.g., alert if backup size drops >20%)

• Recovery playbooks (e.g., documented restore steps + secondary contact)

Step 5: Schedule a “Pre-Mortem Review”
Revisit in 60–90 days: Did any near-misses occur? Were mitigations implemented?

Common Pre-Mortem Scenarios for Your Client Base

Integrating Pre-Mortems into Your MSP Offering

You can productize this as part of your Digital Readiness Assessment or Business Continuity Add-On:

• “Failure Simulation Workshop”: A 2-hour facilitated session with client tech leads.

• Deliverable: A “Top 5 Failure Scenarios + Mitigation Roadmap” report.

• Outcome: Builds trust by showing deep operational empathy—not just selling uptime, but co-owning resilience.

Example positioning:
“We don’t wait for disasters to reveal your weaknesses. In one session, we’ll uncover your biggest hidden risks—and how to neutralize them before they cost you a client or certification.”

This aligns perfectly with your proactive, relationship-driven, compliance-aware approach—and requires no new tools, just structured facilitation.

Light Chaos Engineering for SMBs: Beyond the Whiteboard

For clients ready to go a step further (but still budget-conscious), layer in lightweight chaos practices:

• “Backup fire drills”: Quarterly, delete a non-critical VM and restore it from backup—timed and documented.

• “Failover Fridays”: Once a quarter, simulate ISP or DNS failure using local hosts file changes.

• “Permission purges”: Temporarily revoke an admin’s access to test if others can recover.

These build muscle memory without production risk.

Bottom Line

Pre-mortems turn anxiety about the unknown into actionable insight. For SMBs in high-stakes domains, they’re not just smart—they’re a form of operational due diligence. And by offering them as part of your strategic MSP engagement, you position yourself not as a vendor, but as a resilience partner—exactly the kind of long-term value your 5-year contracts are built on.