• In this section, as someone organizing the initiative or chairing the team, you are expected to articulate the assumptions you hold concerning your issue / problem / task. This activity allows the presenter to provide increased clarity for the group about your thinking. It also gives you a simple way of determining whether all the team is working with the same assumptions about the approach that is being used and the principles driving the work that is under discussion.
• Initiators of the document are encouraged to create a reasonably long list (8 to 15 assumptions). This gives you the chance to lay on the table some operating assumptions that are important to you and which you feel may not be clearly understood or internalized by your colleagues. These assumptions are not presented as the "truth" and they are not set in stone. But they give you an opportunity to get your thoughts and your sense of the thoughts of others on paper so people can react, revise and add to them. Indeed, team members are invited and encouraged to challenge your assumptions in order to gain clarity.
• Wherever possible, particularly in the first round of exchanges with a project planning team on potential participants in a new project, one should try to organize the extensive list of Assumptions under different categories - for example:

• Assumptions About the Purpose
• Assumptions About Initial Structure
• Assumptions About Participants
• etc.

• Note: You can then ask them to please review and reflect on these assumptions. They are asked to use Appendix I to provide feedback by indicating:

• Assumptions that are unclear to them.
• Assumptions with which they strongly disagree (and why)
• Additional assumptions that they have in their minds and which should be added to the list.

These assumptions will be presented to provide some context to explore the areas where your team has strong alignment and areas where there is some confusion and/or disagreement. The assumptions are refined as a result of input from the team. Only when alignment is reached on a refined list of assumptions do they become the Operating Principles that all team members support and can explain to others.