Clarkson’s Sarah Broyd Shares Perspectives on Data Modernization
October 15, 2026 | Clarkston Consulting’s Sarah Broyd spoke to Tech Target about how premortems are particularly useful for data modernization. See Sarah’s featured quotes from the article below, and read the full article here.
How a Premortem Reveals Data Modernization Project Pitfalls
“Premortems force the team to identify those failure modes before architecture and implementation decisions become difficult to unwind,” she said. “They help ensure data modernization projects don’t become a technology project looking for a business outcome.”
“The differences between what each group identifies as potential causes of failure can be as valuable as the risks themselves,” she said.
“A premortem shouldn’t end with a list of things that could go wrong,” Broyd said. “For the most significant risks, identify mitigations, owners, early warning indicators and any changes that should be made to the project plan.”
“The exercise is most valuable when the risks become part of ongoing project governance,” Broyd said. “At key milestones, teams should ask which risks are emerging, which have changed and whether new failure scenarios need to be considered.”
“That wording intentionally takes technology implementation off the table as the definition of success,” Broyd said. “It forces the conversation toward value realization: Did we solve the right business problems? Do people trust and use the data? Are ownership and governance clear?”
“Especially with advanced analytics and AI, it’s critical that businesses have the right data culture and business ownership to ensure the data is accurate and trusted,” Broyd said.
“We are seeing organizations place significantly more emphasis on identifying risk earlier in major transformation programs, although they may not always formally call the exercise a premortem,” Broyd said.
“The value of a premortem isn’t predicting exactly how a project might fail,” she said. “It’s creating an environment where teams can challenge assumptions early, while there is still time to do something about them.”