session · discovery & direction
Initiative kickoff
Half a day. The trio plus leadership. The Initiative Brief is born in this session — named person, named bet, kill criterion, prediction. Signed and dated at the end. The artefact this session produces is the bet the next several cycles answer to.
When
- At the start of a new multi-cycle effort — typically following an Observation session that revealed a moment worth a sustained bet.
- Not for single-feature work — that is Epic kickoff one layer down.
Who
- PO — facilitates. Holds the artefact.
- Tech Lead — names technical reality, names spikes if needed.
- Designer — names what the surface will need to be.
- Leadership — names the bet, names what would falsify it.
Time-box
Four hours. Less and the artefact is thin. More and the room loses focus. One session, not a series — if a second session is needed, the first did not converge.
Inputs
- The Vision/Mission/Goals (re-read at the open).
- The observation note(s) that prompted this initiative.
- The current portfolio's concentration (so leadership knows what this displaces).
Agenda
| Time | What |
|---|---|
| 0–20 min | Re-state the situation. The named person, the moment, what was observed. Anchored to evidence, not aspiration. |
| 20–60 min | Name the bet. What would shipping this change in the named person's life? In their own vocabulary. One sentence the trio can recite. |
| 60–90 min | Sketch the journey. End-to-end, in plain language. Where does it start? Where does it close? What are the in-scope slices vs explicit non-goals? |
| 90–120 min | Write the prediction. Five fields: change · baseline · target · method · check date. The check date is real — typed into the calendar at the table. |
| 120–150 min | Name the kill criterion. "If by check date the signal shows less than [X], we stop this initiative." Specific, falsifiable, signed by leadership. |
| 150–180 min | Spikes and dependencies. Tech Lead surfaces any 2–5 day spike needed before the first Epic can be named. Designer surfaces design-system gaps. |
| 180–210 min | Open questions. What we don't know yet. What needs to be witnessed in the first cycle. What needs leadership input before the first Epic ships. |
| 210–240 min | Sign. The Initiative Brief is filled. Trio + leadership signatures. Dated. Filed in the briefs folder. |
Outputs
- The Initiative Brief (template) — filled, signed, dated.
- A calendar entry for the prediction's check date — owned by the PO.
- A spike list (if any) — owned by the Tech Lead, time-boxed.
What good looks like
The session ends with the trio able to state the bet in one sentence, in their own words, without consulting the artefact. "Gal grades in under 15 minutes by July without losing trust in the numbers — that's the bet." If anyone in the room would say it differently, the session has not closed.
The kill criterion is specific and falsifiable. "If by 2026-09-15 the pilot schools' mean grading time is over 25 minutes, we stop and write the kill brief." Not "if it doesn't work."
Anti-pattern
The session produces a deck instead of a brief. Fancy slides, no artefact, no signatures, no calendar entry. Fix: the kickoff produces the Initiative Brief. If after four hours there is no signed brief, the bet has not been made.
A second anti-pattern: leadership refuses to name a kill criterion — "we'll see how it goes." That is not a bet; that is a wish with a budget. Fix: pressure-test: "what would have to be true for us to stop?" Push until a specific signal and threshold emerges.
See also
- Canon — Before We Build · Initiative Brief · The Prediction
- Template — Initiative Brief
- Practice — Writing Initiative Briefs
- Clinic — An initiative without a goal
- Next session — Epic kickoff (when shaping starts)