The Define Phase

Most projects will start with a request, and often, a brief. Assess the brief with your team in one of your regular catch-ups.

The brief will not contain all the information you need to start work. Make a long list of questions with your team and arrange to gather the answers from your customers.

Does the brief align with the organisation's strategy? Is it a priority? Do you have the resources to support the request? What problem do you think the requestor is trying to solve?

This is where you can get the project team and key stakeholders together and find out more about the problem they're trying to solve. Remember, you've not said yes to the work yet.

It can be really useful to bring in empathy mapping, stakeholder mapping and the creation of problem statements into the initial or follow-up project meeting, as this will help you understand the audience, the project and the problem in more detail.

Define what success looks like. What will the business, the audience, and the stakeholder group see differently as a result of this problem being solved? Is it an increase in time-to-competence? Is it a change in a certain behaviour?

If you can't do this, you may not be able to help.

You need a list of people to talk to move to the next stage, which is Discovery.

This should be a cross-section of the target audience – not the experts, but the people who need help, and the ‘average’ employee in the group.
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