davidbirchall/squad-skills-production

Estimating effort and duration under uncertainty - ranges, three-point (PERT) estimation, reference-class estimation, relative sizing, the cone of uncertainty, buffers, confidence levels, and tracking estimates against actuals. Load when sizing work, forecasting a date, building a schedule or budget, or asked how long something will take or how to give an estimate.

Turn scope into outcome-based checkpoints with vertical slices, dependencies, critical path, exit criteria, buffers, progress tracking, and replanning or cuts when dates move. Load when sequencing work, setting phase gates, building a roadmap, or tracking delivery.

Turning an idea into a workable project plan - goal and outcome definition, who the work is for, constraints, assumptions, risks, dependencies, work breakdown structure, and a living plan document. Load when starting a project, phase, or initiative, when a goal is vague, or when asked to plan, kick off, or structure work before scope is fixed.

Ordering work by value and cost - MoSCoW, RICE scoring, Kano model, cost of delay and weighted shortest job first, value vs effort grids, dependency-aware sequencing, and recording the user's decision. Load when deciding what to do first, cutting a backlog to fit a deadline, resolving competing requests, or asked to rank, triage, or prioritise features or tasks.

Preparing and executing a release or launch - go/no-go criteria, release checklist, staged rollout, rollback plan, release notes, personal launch-window plan, and post-release monitoring. Load when shipping, launching, publishing, or delivering a deliverable, when deciding whether something is ready, or when asked for a release plan, launch checklist, or rollback plan.

Running solo, blameless written retrospectives and post-project reviews - evidence from your own logs and commits, root-cause thinking, at most three actions with success signals, and feeding lessons into the next plan. Load when a week, milestone, release, or project ends, after an incident or missed date, or when asked for a retro, post-mortem, lessons-learned review, or to improve how the work is done.

Defining and defending project scope - in-scope and out-of-scope lists, deliverables, acceptance criteria, definition of done, assumptions, scope creep control, and change requests. Load when fixing what a project will and will not deliver, when requests keep expanding, or when asked to write a scope statement, set boundaries, or assess a change request.