"We narrow our focus but widen our context"
It started because I was forgetful.
I was scheduled to sit down with our client principal and walk-through a new client engagement and I was thinking about all the things I needed to understand by the end of the conversation.
Anyway – the post-it notes just kept coming...
Then I thought to myself, "I wonder if there is a canvas of some sort that already exists that guides this type of conversation?" After a time-boxed 5-minute search didn’t reveal what I was looking for, I took the base structure of the Lean Business Model Canvas and tweaked it to try it out:
Like everything else in our company, it got shared in Slack with all the delivery leads in our network and got iterated a few times, as well as being used to guide the conversation with new clients.
In a perfect world, we'd like those that are going to be involved in the Engagement also involved in the pre-engagement process so there isn't a "handover" at all, but that's not always possible. (This also shouldn't replace the conversation peeps...)
Next step is to experiment with using it as a "test-first" practice and validate if the engagements actually match what we thought they would be a few months down the line.
Please feel free to borrow and improve!
