part six · initiative brief
Initiative Brief
Business gap, human gap, discovery questions, V.
The Initiative Brief is the highest-altitude artifact in Volume II. It holds the named initiative from Volume I in the form the rest of the chain can read. Every Feature Brief inside the initiative refers back to it. Every kill or continue decision at portfolio level reads it.
A good initiative brief is short — two pages — and load-bearing. It is the document a team member who joins the project six months in reads first.
Required sections
INITIATIVE BRIEF
Title: Grading Flow v2
Owner: Alex (PO)
Status: Discovery / Active / Killed (with date of state change)
Goal it serves: Grading completed in <15 minutes (Volume I goal #2)
Last reviewed: 2026-05-05
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1. Business gap
What financial or strategic outcome would change if this
initiative succeeded?
2. Human gap
Who is the named person, and how is their life different
if this initiative succeeds?
3. Current state
What we have witnessed about today's activity. Reference
to journey map and observation notes.
4. Discovery questions
What does the team need to learn before scope can begin?
List, with status (witnessed / inferred / not witnessed).
5. Value declaration (V)
Range, most-likely, assumptions. Tied to Volume I Part 4.
6. Constraints
Hard constraints — regulatory, contractual, technical floor.
7. Explicit non-goals
What this initiative will NOT do. With rationale.
8. Sign-off
Leadership + PO + Tech Lead. Dates.
────────────────────────────────────────────────What each section is for
Business gap
The financial or strategic side of why this matters. Not vague — anchored to Volume I's V declaration and the goal the initiative serves.
Today, grading consumes ~32% of senior teaching time across the customer's 240-grader pool. At ~$45/hr fully loaded, that is ~$2.5M/year of grader time spent in a workflow that observation suggests is structurally inefficient. The initiative aims to recover the recoverable fraction.
Human gap
The lived side. Person-first, witnessed where possible.
Gal, an exam grader at the customer's flagship campus, currently spends an average 47 minutes per grading cycle. She grades ~60 cycles per week. Her contract ends at 5:30pm; in practice she leaves around 7:00 most evenings. The initiative aims to give Gal back the 32 hours/week that the system is currently consuming.
Current state
A short paragraph anchored to the journey map. Refers to specific observed friction.
Discovery questions
The list of things the team needs to learn before scope. Each one tagged with its current status (witnessed / inferred / not witnessed). Discovery questions that remain not witnessed by the time the brief is signed off are explicit risks the chain is taking — visible, named, and acknowledged.
Value declaration
Pulls Volume I Part 4. Range, most-likely, assumptions. Tied to Volume V's VRI.
Constraints
Hard constraints only. Soft constraints — we'd prefer not to — go in the non-goals.
Explicit non-goals
Often the most useful section, six months later. Names what was deliberately excluded and why.
Out of scope: bulk-import of past grading history. Rationale: not in V calculation; observation suggests graders rarely reference >2 weeks back.
Sign-off
Names and dates. The brief is not active until signed.
What it is not
- Not a feature spec. Features come later, in Part 7.
- Not a project plan. Plans come later, in Volume III.
- Not a wireframe. Wireframes are Volume III.
- Not a forecast. The brief contains predictions, but the brief itself is a description of the gap, not of the path.
How long it stays current
The Initiative Brief is the longest-lived Volume II artifact. It is updated at every model update (Volume V Part 6) — assumptions move state, V is adjusted explicitly, status is refreshed.
A brief that has not been touched in three months is either: (a) the initiative is paused (which means it should be in killed state by the corpus rule), or (b) the brief has decayed and no one is using it. Both are problems.
The signing rule
The corpus rule: execution does not begin until the Initiative Brief is signed. A team that begins executing on the basis of a draft brief is a team operating on assumed alignment that has not been written down. The signing is what makes the alignment real.