Stage 2 · Lesson 1 of 8
A one-page project brief
Before a project involving several teams starts, write a one-page . It covers the problem, why it matters now, and the time budget ( calls this the appetite). It also names what is out of scope, the owner on each team, and how you will know it worked.
The brief is what everyone agrees to, so disagreements come up in week one instead of week eight. The out-of-scope list, or , is the most useful line, because it stops the project growing quietly. At staff level you often write a brief for work you will not build yourself. Everything else in this stage, from scope to , refers back to it.
Common trapjumping straight to a : a board lists work, but it cannot tell anyone whether a new piece of work belongs in the project.
A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 2 cheat sheet entries come with the full roadmap. Unlock
Resources for this stage
Start with· follow one of these
- BookFreeShape Up
Ryan Singer, Basecamp · Intermediate
Free book on shaping and scoping work so projects actually finish
- BookFreeGoogle Site Reliability Engineering Book
Google · Advanced
The chapters on managing incidents and blameless postmortem culture