failure-anticipation

Testing & Quality

Campaign: Forward-looking failure analysis combining pre-mortem rapid screening with systematic FMEA deep-dive. Core question: If this artifact fails, how will it fail? Methods: Klein Pre-Mortem 2007, AIAG-VDA FMEA 2019, IEC 60812.

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Failure Anticipation Campaign

Core question: If this artifact fails, how will it fail?

Methodology Sources

Klein (2007) — Pre-Mortem technique: assume failure, retrospect causes
AIAG-VDA FMEA Handbook (2019) — 7-step FMEA with Action Priority
IEC 60812 — Failure modes and effects analysis standard

Strategy Routing

Artifact Type	Primary Strategy	Fallback Strategy
hypothesis, claim	prospective-hindsight	design-fmea
research-question	design-fmea	process-fmea
idea, approach	design-fmea	prospective-hindsight
experiment-design	process-fmea	design-fmea
gap	risk-prioritization	prospective-hindsight

Budget Table

Parameter	S (Quick)	M (Standard)	L (Deep)
Failure modes	8	20	40
Failure chain depth	2	4	6
Mitigation measures	3	8	15
Re-scoring rounds	1	2	3

Tactics

premortem-to-fmea-pipeline — Pre-mortem screens, high-risk items trigger full FMEA
failure-chain-tracing — Trace upstream causes and downstream effects
mitigation-validation — Mini-FMEA on proposed mitigations to verify no new risks

Context Management

Each subagent operates in isolated context. Pre-mortem facilitation runs first to generate rapid failure scenarios. High-severity items are passed to FMEA subagents for structured analysis. Severity/Occurrence/Detection scores flow through action-priority-matrix for classification. Mitigations are validated via re-scoring loop.

Output

Produces FailureAnticipationReport containing: failure mode catalog, cause-effect chains, S/O/D scores, action priority classification (H/M/L), mitigation measures, and post-mitigation re-scores.

Available Strategies

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

Strategy	When to use
design-fmea	Strategy: Research design-level FMEA — function analysis, failure mode identification, severity/occurrence/detection scoring per AIAG-VDA 2019.
mitigation-design	Strategy: Design prevention, detection, and response measures for high-priority failure modes. Produces actionable countermeasures validated via re-scoring.
process-fmea	Strategy: Research execution process FMEA — analyzes how the research process itself can fail during execution, distinct from design-level failures.
prospective-hindsight	Strategy: Klein pre-mortem — assume the artifact has failed, then retrospect plausible causes. Generates rapid failure scenario catalog.
risk-prioritization	Strategy: Action Priority matrix — classifies failure modes into H/M/L priority using severity-weighted scoring per AIAG-VDA 2019 Action Priority tables.

Available Tactics

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

Tactic	When to use
failure-chain-tracing	Tactic: Trace upstream causes and downstream effects of each failure mode. Builds multi-level cause-mode-effect chains for systemic understanding.
mitigation-validation	Tactic: Run mini-FMEA on proposed mitigations to verify they do not introduce new failure modes. Prevents mitigation-induced risks.
premortem-to-fmea-pipeline	Tactic: Pre-mortem rapid screening feeds high-risk items into full FMEA analysis. Bridges fast intuitive generation with systematic structured analysis.

Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

SOP	When to use
context-checkpoint	Append research process and results to the current Phase's context file. Each append MUST contain >=500 lines of markdown covering both process and results. Use this skill at plan-designated checkpoint points — typically after each strategy completes or at key decision nodes within a research Phase.
context-init	Create a new context file for a research Phase. Called once at Phase start to initialize the file that subsequent context-checkpoint calls will append to. Use this skill whenever a new research Phase begins and a fresh context file is needed.
mitigation-proposal	Proposes concrete mitigation strategies for identified weaknesses. Generates prevention, detection, and response measures with feasibility assessment.
stress-test-saturation-detection	Determines whether validation has reached saturation — no new weaknesses or failure modes being discovered. Used by all 5 campaigns as termination signal.
verdict-synthesis	Synthesizes findings from a completed campaign into typed verdict reports. Produces DebateVerdict, RedTeamReport, FailureAnticipationReport, CounterfactualMap, or AdversarialStressReport depending on campaign. Also supports cross-campaign StressTestSummary.