You can’t improve what you won’t look at honestly. Two scorecards keep the core artifacts honest — one for the Initiative DocumentInitiative DocumentThe PR/FAQ-shaped document where an initiative's context lives — customer, solution, plan, business case, and success metrics., one for the Initiative Plan (the ApproachThe ApproachThe multi-week narrative roadmap — titled weekly outcomes ("The one where…"), each with a demo, planned backwards from success.). Each criterion is scored simply: meets, needs improvement, or unscored. No averages, no weighting — just an honest read, criterion by criterion.

The Initiative Document scorecard

Run the Initiative Document against six groups of criteria. Each is a plain read on whether the artifact does its job.

Customer

  • The customers mentioned share the same problem.
  • A single problem is defined — not a cluster of loosely related ones.
  • You can find the customer: a real segment, with contact details.
  • The problem is validated, and the evidence is convincing.
  • The impact of the problem is clear.

Solution

  • A layman — your mother — can understand the solution.
  • There is evidence the solution actually solves the problem.
  • The solution is visualised: the storyboard is clear and sequential.

Planning & Team

  • The story of the initiative is easy to understand.
  • The Approach weeks are listed start to finish.
  • Time-critical events are considered, or it’s made clear why there are none.
  • Relationships to other projects are clear, or why there are none.
  • The team contains the roles needed to complete the initiative independently.

Business Case

  • The segment size is calculated.
  • Reach is clarified, rather than hand-waved as “all customers”.
  • The users to launch with are clarified, or it’s made clear why you’d launch to all.
  • The budget is calculated clearly — in time or in money.
  • The business case is plausible.

Measure Success

  • It is clear how success will be measured: the method, when it’s measured, and the time needed to see it.
  • Metrics are tied to the customer problem, not to vanity numbers.
  • Lead metrics are defined, not just lagging ones.

General

  • The Initiative Document is supported by the team.
  • It has been peer reviewed.
  • It is approved.
  • It tells a coherent story a new hire can read in about 30 minutes.

The Initiative Plan scorecard

Run the Approach against these. This scorecard tests whether the plan is a believable, learnable storyline rather than a list of tasks.

  • Every week has a title, and each title is specific with a clear outcome.
  • The work is split into clear workstreams.
  • The storyline is believable and seems feasible end to end.
  • There is a comprehensive checklist of outcomes, and items are defined as outcomes, not activities.
  • UnknownsUncertaintyWhat the team does not yet know — sized and tracked deliberately rather than hidden inside estimates. and Uncertainties are specified and considered in the plan.
  • Measuring success is considered in the plan.
  • The plan is supported by the full team.
  • The plan is approved.

How to self-assess honestly

Score against reality, not intention. The question is never “did we mean to do this?” — it’s “does the artifact, as it stands today, meet the criterion?” The most useful answers are the uncomfortable ones, so make it safe to give them. A scorecard full of “meets” on a project that’s quietly drifting is worse than no scorecard at all.

Reading the results

Don’t average the scores. Look for the lowest score that touches the most work — that’s usually where the next improvement pays off most. A “needs improvement” on success metrics will quietly distort every week of delivery; a “needs improvement” on a section nobody downstream depends on can wait. Fix the one with the most leverage, re-score, and repeat.