Lean Inception Template

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Starting new things is hard.

The teams I work with have used Inceptions as a valuable pattern to kick workstreams off and set teams up for success.

This template enables teams to easily design and plan an inception by following / adapting a proven sequence of industry standard, best practice tools.

What is an inception?

An inception is a flexible, lean set of activities that set teams up for success.

Why incept?

The purpose of an inception is to de-risk delivery by making sure you know what you are doing, you are doing it in the right way and have everything in place so you can hit the ground running.

Inceptions help teams:

gain shared understanding and context
build relationships, empathy and trust
align on outcomes and approaches
make right choices at the right point in timem
manage risk
build solid foundations from which to proceed with confidence and at pace

How does this template help?

This template is based on a series of board linked via an overall narrative, each answering a single question, so that together a team can ultimately answer the three key questions when starting a new initiative: where are we? where do we want to be? how do we get there?

Beautiful Abstraction | Marcel Britsch

Product Consultant

We help organisations and their teams design and deliver better digital products and services, work in better ways, and achieve better outcomes. We design and run discoveries and inceptions, we support organisation in strategy formulation, facilitate workshops and meetings, and we provide hands-on business analysis and product management expertise. We do this as advisors, mentors or coaches, or as members of client teams.