Module 4 · Lesson 4.2
Negotiating a definition
How producer and receiver agree a definition both can live with, and keep it working.
Key idea
A definition is negotiated between the team that produces and the team that receives. The effort is an investment made once; afterwards the short word works again.
In this lesson
- Agreed, not handed down
- How Harbourline agreed “Run-book ready for go-live”
- The five steps
- One return, or a pattern?
- When to renegotiate
Agreed, not handed down
An operational definition isn’t written by one side and handed to the other. It is negotiated between the team producing something and the team receiving it. Both have to be able to live with it, or the producing team will quietly ignore it and the receiving team will quietly work around it.
That negotiation is often the most intense, most collaborative point in the whole relationship. It may take a proper working session to agree what “ready” or “complete” actually means. That effort is an investment, not a standing cost. Once the definition exists, everyday conversation about it can drop back to simple communication.
How Harbourline agreed “Run-book ready for go-live”
Harbourline · Service Transition and the Pune Service Desk
Before the definition existed, new client services regularly went live without a usable run-book. The Pune Service Desk discovered what it needed only when the first calls arrived. Aoife Byrne, a team lead in Service Transition, worked through the problem in an A3 and proposed a handover standard.
Service Transition, run by Fiona Grant, produces the run-book. The Service Desk, run by Vikram Rao, receives it and has to work from it. The two teams negotiated the definition together:
- Attribute: a run-book written with the team that will run the service, covering the top 10 expected calls, the alerts and who to call.
- Method: walked through with the Service Desk and signed off by them before go-live.
- Decision criteria: a Pune analyst who has never seen the service can resolve the top 10 expected calls from the run-book alone.
Fiona Grant owns the definition, and it is recorded on both teams’ canvases.
The steps
Harbourline followed the same steps any two teams can use.
Try it
Five steps to a working definition
Click each step to see how Harbourline handled it for “Run-book ready for go-live”.
One return, or a pattern?
A single return is a normal part of settling a new definition. A pattern of returns is a different signal. It calls for a wider look at whether something systemic is broken, including whether the circumstances the definition was written for have simply moved on.
This matters because a quick fix made in isolation can easily become the next team’s problem downstream, often far enough away in time and distance that nobody connects the two. Treating a pattern of returns as a signal to investigate, rather than a queue of complaints to clear, is what stops a local fix from becoming next quarter’s broken process.
When to renegotiate
A definition holds until circumstances change enough to break it: a new kind of service, a new system, a new client requirement. At that point, it needs renegotiating, not patching around. Harbourline’s canvases record a review trigger for each team, such as “a system the canvas depends on changes”, so the question gets asked at the right time.
Between those points, the definition does its work in the background. “The run-book isn’t signed off” is now enough to stop a go-live, and nobody needs to argue about what it means.
Pause and think · your notes
Take the word from lesson 4.1 and plan how you would agree it with the other side.
How Alex would answer
Draft it with the other side, not for them. Expect the debugging weeks to change it; that is what they are for.
What to take away
- Negotiate the definition between producer and receiver, and name an owner.
- Set an effective date, debug it with real work, then return what doesn’t meet it.
- Treat a pattern of returns as a signal to investigate, and renegotiate when circumstances change.
Your progress
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