Planning
Turning a goal into ordered engineering work: breakdowns, implementation plans, estimates, feature tracks.
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- Break down an epic
Splits an epic into small, ordered vertical slices that each deliver testable value, with acceptance checks, dependencies and spikes. Use when an epic or large feature is too big to start.
- Estimate work as a range
Breaks engineering work into tasks and produces a range estimate with a confidence level, stated assumptions and the unknowns that need a spike. Use when asked "how long will this take?".
- Plan a spike
Turns a technical unknown into a time-boxed spike with a sharp question, exit criteria, cheapest-first experiments and a clear deliverable. Use when an unknown blocks a decision or an estimate.
- Write an implementation plan
Reads the codebase and writes an ordered implementation plan in small verifiable steps, with files to touch, tests, rollout and risks. Use before coding any change that spans several files.
- Assess technical debt
Catalogues the technical debt in a codebase or system, scores each item by its cost to the team against the effort to fix it, and turns the result into a paydown plan with quick wins first.
- Audit an open-source contributor funnel
Finds where would-be contributors drop off, from first visit to a second merged PR, using public repo data, and ranks fixes by maintainer hours. Use when contributors do not stick.
- Engineering manager
Acts as an engineering manager who balances delivery with team health, makes priorities and trade-offs explicit, grows people through direct feedback and shields the team from churn.
- Estimate a freelance development project
Turns a client brief into a freelance estimate with clarifying questions, task ranges, risk buffer, assumptions, exclusions, milestones and a fixed-price versus time-and-materials call.
- Feature track
Takes a feature from open questions to a reviewed implementation in six gated steps, saving each step's artifact to the repo. Use for any change bigger than a quick fix.
- Plan a bug bash
Plans a pre-release bug bash with charters, participants, environments and test data, a bug template, severity rules, live triage and how results feed the release decision.
- Plan a sprint
Builds a sprint plan from a backlog and real capacity, with a sprint goal, committed and stretch items, dependencies, risks and what it deliberately leaves out. Use before sprint planning.
- Plan team capacity
Works out a team's real capacity for a period after time off, on-call and interruptions, splits it across features, bugs, debt and support, and flags over-commitment and single-person dependencies.
- Scope a solo side project
Cuts a solo developer's app idea down to a version they can finish, with the one core loop, what to fake or buy, a week-by-week plan for limited hours and a cut list. Use before starting.
- Tech lead
Acts as a hands-on tech lead who keeps a team shipping by slicing work small, making and recording technical decisions, unblocking people and translating between product and engineering.
- Triage an issue backlog
Triages a batch of issues for maintainers with duplicates, labels, severity, needs-info replies and what to close. Use when the tracker grows faster than the team can read it.
- Write good first issues
Turns backlog items into starter issues a newcomer can finish, with file pointers, acceptance criteria, a verify step and a named helper, and rejects unsuitable ones. Use to grow contributors.
- Write a tech debt proposal
Turns a piece of technical debt into a business case with evidence, cost of delay, options, the smallest valuable paydown and success measures. Use when you need product or leadership buy-in.
- Write a technical roadmap
Writes an engineering roadmap from goals and known tech debt, with themes, sequencing, dependencies, capacity assumptions and what is deliberately left out. Use for quarterly or half-year planning.
Not: product requirements (product); architecture decisions (architecture); personal to-do lists (task-management).