ThemeOperations & Process
CardCard 40 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Ops & Projects

Projects, sprints & tasks

How the organization runs projects and tracks work is foundational to almost everything else, and the biggest gap is usually between how it says it works and how it actually works.

Every team develops its own rhythms for managing work: how tasks are captured, how priorities are set, how progress is tracked, how work gets handed off. Those rhythms are rarely fully documented, and when they are, the documentation often describes an ideal that few people follow.

What is worth capturing is not a methodology but a current reality: what tools are in use, how projects are typically structured, what the normal stages of a piece of work look like, and who is responsible for keeping things moving.

The goal is to give someone new enough context to understand how work moves through the organization without having to shadow someone for a month to figure it out.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

How projects are initiated

What triggers a new project, who approves it, and what the minimum documentation is before work starts.

How work is tracked

The tools and methods used to track tasks, priorities, and progress, and where the authoritative view of current work lives.

Project stages & handoffs

The typical stages a project moves through, who is responsible at each stage, and how handoffs between people or teams are handled.

How work gets closed

What done looks like, how outputs are reviewed or approved, and where the record of completed work is kept.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

How does a new project or task get started, and what information needs to exist before work begins?
Where does the authoritative list of current work live, and do people reliably keep it up to date?
How are priorities set and communicated, and what happens when priorities conflict?
What does a project handoff look like in practice, and what is the most common thing that gets lost in one?
What is the organization's definition of done for a piece of work, and is that consistent across teams?

Things to notice

Documented processes for project management are often aspirational; the real risk is assuming people follow them when they do not, which leads to surprises during audits or handoffs.
Work tracking systems are only useful if people actually use them; a tool that is supposed to hold the source of truth but is routinely out of date is a liability, not an asset.
Different teams often develop different approaches to managing work; documenting the official approach without acknowledging team variation creates confusion for people who move between teams.