Bet Brief — Template

The Bet Brief is the team's contract with itself at the start of a cycle. One page. Posted in the team's Google Chat Space within the first week. It anchors every weekly check-in that follows and every brief at the end.

§ I · The templateWhat goes in a Bet Brief

Bet Brief [Logbook ID] · Cycle [N] · Week 01

[Bet title — short, plain language]

Team · [Department or team name] · Owner · [Name]

The problem

One paragraph. What district problem are we trying to address in this cycle? Why now? Connect to the current quarterly intent.

Hypothesis

If we do [X], we expect [Y]. State it plainly. The Logbook can help sharpen it — see the Bet-Writing Primer.

Success criteria

How will we know? Two or three concrete, measurable criteria. Include at least one quantitative and one qualitative.

Criterion 1 — [measurable]
Criterion 2 — [measurable]
Criterion 3 — [measurable]

Week-one plan

What the team is doing in the first week to start the experiment. Concrete actions, dates, who owns each.

What we're not doing

Name the obvious adjacent things we will NOT take on this cycle. Keeps the bet scoped.

Risks & unknowns

Two or three things that could derail the bet, plus what is genuinely unknown at the start. Honesty here helps the Logbook surface things later.

§ II · The fields, explainedWhat each one is doing

The problem. The Bet Brief begins with the problem, not the solution. Connect it to the quarterly intent — every bet lives inside an intent. If you can't tie the bet to the current intent, you are probably running the wrong bet this cycle.

Hypothesis. "If [we do X], we expect [Y]." A good hypothesis is small enough to run in six weeks, specific enough to know whether it worked, and broad enough that the team has real choices about how to test it. See the Bet-Writing Primer for patterns.

Success criteria. Two or three concrete tests. Include at least one quantitative measure and at least one qualitative one. Avoid vanity metrics. The criteria should be falsifiable — if you couldn't fail, you didn't really have a hypothesis.

Week-one plan. Just the first week. Don't try to plan the full six weeks — the point of SHIP is that you adapt as evidence comes in. The Bet Brief commits to the first move only.

What we're not doing. Naming the scope-creep candidates up front protects the bet. When a chief or a peer asks "could you also try X?", the Bet Brief is the team's polite way to say "not this cycle."

Risks & unknowns. What could go sideways. What you genuinely don't know yet. This list will likely change — that's fine. The Logbook reads this when flagging issues mid-cycle.

§ III · How it livesIn the Google Chat Space

The Bet Brief is posted as a pinned message in the team's Google Chat Space in Week 01. The team can iterate on it during Week 01 — that's expected — but by the end of Week 01 it should be locked. The Logbook reads it as the anchor for everything that follows.

Every weekly check-in points back to it. The end-of-cycle brief — whichever pattern — opens by restating the original Hypothesis from the Bet Brief.

§ IV · How the Logbook helpsFrom a problem to a sharp Bet Brief

Teams don't write the Bet Brief from scratch. A team member opens a thread in their Chat Space, talks the problem out with the Logbook, and the Logbook drafts a Bet Brief against this template. The Logbook will push back on hypotheses that are too vague, criteria that aren't falsifiable, and bets that don't connect to the current intent. The team revises and posts.

A note on size A Bet Brief should fit on one page. If it's longer, the bet is probably too big for a single cycle. Split it or sharpen the scope before you start the work.