discovery & brief — volume II
Introduction
Volume I named the initiative. The gap between the named person's life today and the world the goal describes. This volume is the work of crossing that gap from understanding-not-yet-witnessed to understanding-witnessed-enough-to-predict.
Discovery is not interview. It is observation, with structured language to record what was seen. Discovery is not survey. Surveys ask people what they did; observation watches what they actually do. The two answers diverge more often than the difference can be ignored.
Discovery is the work the team does to earn the right to predict. The brief is the artifact that holds the prediction. Without one, the rest of the chain is hope.
The shape of this volume
Nine parts. The first five describe the practice of seeing. The last four describe what gets written down.
- Observation — going to watch the person work, not asking.
- Person & Moment — naming who has the problem and when it happens.
- Journey Mapping — the full activity, with friction marks.
- Assumption Surfacing — naming what we believe but haven't witnessed.
- The Five Stations — the discovery walk: Vision & Context, Problem Framing, User Journey & Slices, Solution Options, Decision & Scope.
- Initiative Brief — business gap, human gap, discovery questions, V.
- Feature Brief — observation, journey, direction, prediction, sign-off.
- Technical Design Brief — system-witnessed problem, technical prediction.
- Prediction Writing — baseline, target, check date, method, owner.
The volume's central act is the brief. Everything before the brief is preparation; everything after the brief is execution. A brief that does not predict is not a brief. A brief that predicts but is never checked is a guess that wore a uniform.