◐ Before We Build
On the work that keeps the understanding of a problem intact — before the first commitment, before it has to survive being passed to someone else.
Part One — Direction
Why do we exist, and for whom? Established once, used as a filter on every decision that follows.
- Direction — the working filter and the four levels
- Vision — what the world looks like if this product fully works
- Mission — who we build for, which moments, and what we will not try to do
- Goals — the annual direction — qualitative, stable
- Objectives and Key Results — outcome KRs that cannot be gamed
Part Two — Intent
What specific gap are we betting on? The initiative brief that protects the problem from the solution that wants to replace it.
- Intent — the bet, and why requirements are already too late
- What an Initiative Brief contains — five components
- A live Initiative Brief — Teacher Assessment Workflow, AMIT Lemida Q2 2026
Part Three — Discovery
Did we witness it or just describe it? The last moment the team has full control over the understanding.
- Discovery — closing the distance between what the team believes and what is real
- Every team starts somewhere on a confidence spectrum
- The accommodation — why watching reveals what asking conceals
- Three tools — Spike · POC · Prototype
- Two paths — Feature vs Technical
The Brief
A record of what the team actually knows about a problem — in the order that makes the understanding cumulative rather than flat.
- The Brief — why the format exists and why the order matters
- Intro and Experience Snapshot
- The Journey — Feature Path
- The Journey — Technical Path
- What We Learned
- Decisions
- Risks
- Prediction
- Prediction Table and Agreed On
Closing
- The last moment
- The requirements are ready → continues into Volume III
Supplementary
Corpus content written before the fidelity restoration. Kept while inbound links are migrated; will be archived once their content is fully absorbed into the source-aligned pages above.
Observation · Person & Moment · Journey Mapping · Assumption Surfacing · The Five Stations · Initiative Brief (corpus version) · Feature Brief (corpus version) · Technical Design Brief (corpus version) · Prediction Writing (corpus version)