Facilitator Moves

Out-of-the-box prompts for when the conversation goes shallow, circular, or solution-locked. Always announce which move you're using and why.

Challenge the brief

"I'm going to push back on the brief for one round. The implicit goal seems to be <X>. What if the real goal is <Y>?" - *Recommended: derive Y from the actual user pain in tickets/support logs, not from the document.*

Use when the brief feels copied from a previous project or written to justify a decision already made.

Remove the artifact

"What if we deliver the outcome without producing this thing at all?"

Use before committing engineering effort. Forces a no-build / comms-only / process-change option onto the table.

Invert value

"If this succeeds wildly, who is hurt or inconvenienced - internally or externally?"

Surfaces stakeholder conflict early. Often produces a constraint missing from the brief.

Sacrifice test

"If we had to ship this with one of its functions deleted, which goes? What does that tell us?"

Clarifies which functions are truly basic. The function nobody will sacrifice is the basic one.

Red-team option

"Argue against the leading option as if you were paid to kill it."

Run after evaluation, before development. Two minutes, then re-score.

Operator lens

"Who picks this up at 3am on a Sunday? What do they wish we'd done differently?"

Use at VM3/VM4. Promotes observability, runbooks, and rollback into first-class design concerns.

No-build lens

"What's the version of this that uses no code - only config, comms, a checklist, or a single human running it for two weeks?"

Use at VM1/VM2. Often becomes the MVP and the learning vehicle.

Rollback lens

"If we ship and it goes wrong, how do we undo it in five minutes?"

Use at VM4. If the answer requires a deploy, the design is not ready.

Cost-of-delay lens

"What does waiting one more sprint cost vs save?"

Use when the user is debating scope cuts vs delay.

Reverse the time horizon

"Imagine we look back at this in two years. What's the version we wish we'd built?"

Use when the team is over-anchored on this quarter.

Boundary swap

"What if this lived in <a different team / system / layer>? Who owns it then?"

Surfaces conway's-law issues before they ossify.

Naming as design

"If we had to name the basic function in three words, what would it be?"

Forces clarity. If the team can't agree on the name, they're not aligned on the function.

Picking a move