--- name: scoping-canvas description: "A one-page, multi-section definition of what an initiative actually covers — problem, goal, in scope, out of scope, team, timeline, assumptions — before anyone starts work on it. Use when: An initiative is real enough to commit time to, but its boundaries haven't been written down anywhere a disagreement could be checked against. Multiple people or teams are involved, and 'what's actually in scope' has already come up as a question once. You want a fast way to see what's still undefined — a thin section here is a real gap, not just an editing task. Not for: The initiative is small enough that one person can hold the whole scope in their head with no real risk of drift — a canvas adds ceremony without adding value there. You need a full charter with a resourced budget and formal sign-off — a kaizen event charter or business case is the right tool for that weight of commitment. The boundaries are already written down and agreed somewhere else — don't duplicate an existing source of truth." --- # Scoping canvas A one-page, multi-section definition of what an initiative actually covers — problem, goal, in scope, out of scope, team, timeline, assumptions — before anyone starts work on it. Family: Problem definition · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A scoping canvas is a one-page definition of what an initiative actually covers, built before anyone starts work on it — not a project plan, and not a full charter, just the boundary-setting document that keeps a team from discovering three weeks in that they disagreed about what was in scope. Unlike most tools in this catalogue, a canvas is genuinely defined by which sections apply to the situation, the same way a real Business Model Canvas or lean scoping exercise is — problem/goal/in-scope/out-of-scope/team/timeline/assumptions is the default set, not a rigid universal structure. ## When to use it Use it when: - An initiative is real enough to commit time to, but its boundaries haven't been written down anywhere a disagreement could be checked against. - Multiple people or teams are involved, and 'what's actually in scope' has already come up as a question once. - You want a fast way to see what's still undefined — a thin section here is a real gap, not just an editing task. Not when: - The initiative is small enough that one person can hold the whole scope in their head with no real risk of drift — a canvas adds ceremony without adding value there. - You need a full charter with a resourced budget and formal sign-off — a kaizen event charter or business case is the right tool for that weight of commitment. - The boundaries are already written down and agreed somewhere else — don't duplicate an existing source of truth. ## How to fill it in - **problem** — What's the situation, and why does it matter now? One or two sentences, not a full background essay. - **goal** — What does this initiative need to achieve, specifically enough that you'd know if it succeeded? - **in-scope** — What's genuinely in scope — drafted from your notes, then yours to correct. - **out-of-scope** — What's deliberately excluded, and why — an empty out-of-scope section is itself a finding, not just unfilled. - **team** — Who's involved, and in what role? - **timeline** — What are the key milestones or phases? - **assumptions** — What has to be true for this to work, or what's constraining it? ## What good looks like The example below scopes a kaizen event that picks up directly where a prior A3's countermeasures left off — tightly bounded to one line, one procedure, explicitly deferring the adjacent line and any capital spend rather than letting scope creep in by default. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/scoping-canvas ## Common mistakes - **Leaving out-of-scope empty because nothing's been explicitly excluded yet.** — An empty out-of-scope section almost never means nothing's excluded — it usually means the boundary hasn't been thought through yet, which is exactly the ambiguity this canvas exists to catch before it causes a real disagreement. - **Writing a goal statement vague enough that almost any outcome would count as success.** — A goal that can't fail isn't a real goal — the same discipline an A3's problem statement or a business case's cost-of-inaction section already holds itself to. - **Treating the canvas as a one-time exercise nobody revisits once the initiative starts.** — Scope drifts in real work — a canvas that's never checked against again is ceremony, not a working document. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **A3 problem solving** (`a3`) — A recurring problem an A3 surfaces sometimes needs work bigger than one countermeasure can carry — that's exactly when it graduates into a scoped initiative of its own. Downstream: - **Kaizen event charter** (`kaizen-charter`) — Once an initiative is scoped and worth a dedicated event, the charter is where it gets resourced, dated, and given a roster — heavier commitment than a canvas alone implies. - **Business case** (`business-case`) — An initiative whose value needs to be argued for, not just scoped, is where a business case's investment/value-driver discipline takes over. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding where the real boundary between in-scope and out-of-scope actually sits - Deciding whether a goal statement is specific enough to know later whether it was hit Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting each section's bullets from a rough description of the initiative - Flagging a section that's too thin to mean anything yet, rather than padding it Drudgery — automated: - Formatting the canvas and keeping every section on one page - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Scoping canvas is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/scoping-canvas.