What is the remit of our team?
Goals
- Clarify what work and responsibilities are owned by the team and what is owned outside the team
- Get internal stakeholders on board with the remit and authority of the team
What you need
- post-its, pencils, markers, red dot stickers, etc
- a virtual whiteboard if you're running this remotely
Preparation
Set up a whiteboard with three columns:
- What's IN the team? What problems will the team solve? What type of work will we tackle? What decisions will we own?
- What's OUT of the team? What problems will not be solved by our team? What type of work won’t be expected from us? What decisions will be owned somewhere else?
- Unclear... What work and responsibilities are we not sure about?
Have red dots at hand that people can stick on post its.
Try to invite stakeholders to take part in the activity, to get their perspective about the above.
Running the session
Silent brainstorming
Give participants 10 minutes to individually write down their thoughts for each column of the board.
Reflect and flag
Allow participant to silently read through all the thoughts that have been posted in the columns 'IN' and 'OUT'.
If they disagree with the placement of an item or have doubts about it being IN or OUT, instruct them to flag it by adding a red dot next to the item.
Discuss and align
As a full group, discuss all items with a red dots as well as items in the 'Unclear' column. For each item, find agreement on whether it is IN or OUT of the team.
The session is complete when all flagged items have been sorted and the 'Unclear' column is empty.
Share the output of the session with stakeholders to validate that the team's remit and authority aligns with their expectations.