Document Type
Article
Abstract
Background
Implementation failure is a major barrier to program success. It is widely acknowledged that context matters—individual, community, and organizational norms, values, environment, and priorities influence successful program implementation. A mismatch between how the program was intended to be delivered and the constraints of the context in which it was delivered is a major cause of implementation failure. The barriers to implementation are usually understood after a program has failed. Although there are tools that can help accommodate for, or overcome, contextually-driven sources of implementation failure, there remains a significant gap – a tool and structured approach to analyze data that is designed to proactively predict how and why implementation might fail due to context.
Methods and Results
This manuscript contains: (1) the history and underpinning theories behind the implementation premortem; (2) a description of the implementation premortem – a tool that can be used prospectively in conjunction with existing tools to proactively promote contextual fit of implementation strategies; (3) an example of an implementation premortem; (4) useful frameworks to use when analyzing data derived from an implementation premortem; and (5) challenges and limitations of the implementation premortem.
Conclusions
Ultimately, an implementation premortem is a tool that when combined with a structured analytic approach can be used to promote efficiency in learning about contextually-relevant considerations that can influence the impact, feasibility, and sustainability of an implementation effort.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Implementation Science Communications, Volume 6, 2025.
Rights
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
APA Citation
Wippold, G. M., Garcia, K. A., Domlyn, A., Wong, D., & Fernandez, M. E. (2025). Proactive planning for contextual fit: The role of the implementation premortem. Implementation Science Communications, 6, 84.https://doi.org/10.1186/s43058-025-00768-z