What should you consider when identifying the brutal facts and important realities which you will have to manage during this project?  This exercise is your durability test, to ensure that you are building your project with enduring realities, controllable future actions, and sound legal principles. 

Checklist:

• As always, gather in your planning work. It should be readily accessible and easily navigable.
• Identify the important issues, i.e. those on which success might depend, and separate them into a) facts, b) future events, and c) precedent
• Start with facts and verify that you can prove the important ones.
• Determine whether you will be able to control the important future events.
• Consider the provable facts and expected events together as a picture of your project in the future.
• Research and condense the key legal principles.
• Consider how these laws would apply to your picture of the project in the future.
• Verify that this exercise, as a whole, has been completed thoroughly.
• Identify any concerns, possible mitigation, and then consider the overall impact.
• Report to the client.

Lean Routine:

1. Have you gathered in and reviewed all of the key findings from the initial investigation?
2. Have you thought about all of the possible issues on which success might depend? Have you isolated the important ones? Have you then divided those important issues into:

a.  Facts and events that are in the past

b.  Future events that can affect success