Of course the chances are most of those wants are cyclical, such as with your example. I’m thinking that’s probably why situating a business feel much more difficult as there are inevitably a far wider spectrum of demands on the entity.

I still think you’re right that identifying all the parties who want something from the badly situated entity (and vice versa) is the first and hardest step (hence “Everything else is details”, though I’m glad you didn’t include the word “just” .

A side note: I had a team a little bit ago. The testers had told me pre-retrospective that they were unhappy with dev’s fairly casual approach to staying in touch. Ten minutes into the retro, dev expressed frustration that testing couldn’t turn results around fast enough.
Bingo. I situated them both: “Dev has something testing wants, and testing has something dev wants. Everything else is details.”

Oh yes, right on the nail, spot on, etc. Sometimes the fear of making a wrong action for a team can just *paralyse* me. Though these days I’m fairly confident with teams, it’s the next right act for the business that’s troubling me.

Which is an interesting thought: situating is equally applicable to the business, as well as a team…