before we build · part two
Intent
Direction tells the team where they are going. Intent names the specific gap they are betting on getting there.
Most teams skip this entirely. They receive a requirement and start building. By the time a requirement arrives, the original problem has been compressed — described, simplified, and turned into a solution hypothesis — before the team ever sees it. Intent goes upstream of that compression.
A team builds a grading dashboard. It ships. Grading time drops from 47 minutes to 40. The retrospective is positive. The next sprint, someone proposes improving the export. The sprint after, a smarter column layout. Each sprint looks like delivery. After a year, the team has a well-built dashboard — and the actual problem was never closed.
The actual problem was the switching. The switching is why the errors happen. The switching is why it takes 47 minutes instead of 12. A dashboard, however well built, does not remove the switching. It improves the tool Gal switches between. The gap was never closed, because the gap was never named.
This is the failure mode Intent exists to prevent. Without a named gap, features have no failure condition at the initiative level. They can be built correctly, shipped on time, reviewed positively — and the actual situation can remain unchanged. Nobody notices, because the gap was never written down. The features were evaluated against themselves, not against the problem they were supposed to solve.
An initiative is a bet. A written claim that a specific gap exists for a specific person, and that closing it will move the current Objective. A feature is a hypothesis about how to close that gap. Without the initiative, there is no gap. Without the gap, there is no failure condition. The feature can succeed — shipped, tested, accepted — while the situation it was supposed to change remains exactly as it was.
Most briefs are written to justify a solution that was already chosen. The Initiative Brief is written to protect the problem from the solution that wants to replace it.
Intent is the anchor of the three phases. Direction without Intent is aspiration without a test. Discovery without Intent is observation without a stake. The initiative is what gives both of them something concrete to hold.
Why requirements are already too late
By the time a requirement reaches a team, two compressions have already happened. Someone experienced something real. They described it. The description became a requirement. The requirement carries a solution hypothesis embedded inside the problem statement — and the team receives both simultaneously, with no clear way to separate them.
Intent goes upstream of the requirement. It asks: what gap is this requirement trying to close? Is that gap the right gap? Has anyone witnessed it? This is not resistance to moving quickly — it is the discipline that makes speed mean something. A team that sprints without naming the gap can spend a quarter building the wrong answer with great craftsmanship.