DEFINE is two weeks of focused workshops. These are the four I run most, the tools we put on the wall, and the question each one settles.
What you getYou build for the people who actually do the work, not just the people in the meeting, so you stop paying for features nobody asked for.
I interview the people who use the work and the people who do it, not only the people who manage it. That’s where the hidden workarounds are. Then, in a persona workshop, we turn what we heard into a few people everyone in the room can picture.
“What would you want from a new system?”
“Hmm… a dashboard, maybe? Something faster. And it should work like the old one.”
You leave with personas built from evidence: who they are, the tools they use today, their pain points, and what they do not want.
Line operator · does the work
“The scanner says we have it. The shelf says we don’t. Help!”
Logistics planner · plans the work
“Re-planning a shift by phone is a long and winding road.”
Supplier coordinator · supplies the work
“Confirm the time once, and here comes the truck.”
What you getEvery decision gets a number. Priorities are settled by value, not by whoever argues loudest, and you can show leadership exactly what each feature is worth.
Once we know who the users are, we start the Value Impact Map, before anyone talks about features. It reads left to right: the business objective, the impacts it needs on people’s behaviour, the features that cause them, and the success metrics that prove it worked. It becomes the project’s North Star.
Every level carries a number, and every number gets a baseline before we build anything. Without a “before”, nobody can prove the “after”. When two features compete for the same slot, the one that moves the North Star further wins, not the one argued for loudest.
ToolsImpact mapping · Baselines · North Star metric
What you getA first version that delivers the most value within your budget, plus a written list of what waits and why, so the scope stops creeping.
With the North Star in place, we go wide. Every story anyone can think of goes on a sticky note, written from a persona’s point of view, and lined up along the journey from left to right. Then we draw one line across the whole wall.
Everything above the line is the MVP: the thinnest slice that still works from start to finish. Everything below it waits, with a reason. That “Not now” list is what protects the first version from creeping.
ToolsStory map · Release slicing · MoSCoW · Value vs effort · Buy a feature · Kanban
Backbone: the journey John Paul George
What you getA plan your leadership and your engineers read the same way, which your team can start on the next morning.
We place the features on a timeline that respects what depends on what. Process flows and mockups for each feature are where those dependencies come to light, before anyone writes code.
Each item keeps its number from the Value Impact Map, so the team always sees why it’s building it. For leadership, the same plan reads as Now, Next and Later: clear direction, without promising dates for work that’s still uncertain.
ToolsGantt timeline · Dependency mapping · Now / Next / Later
Six artefacts your leadership and engineers read the same way.
None of these tools is mine alone. DEFINE puts four well-tested practices in one order and ties them to your numbers.
Tell me what you’re facing. I’ll tell you honestly whether these workshops fit, and which ones you need.