45ck direct-vs-parallel-vs-phased-vs-pilot-selector
Purpose
Select an implementation rollout approach by comparing direct, parallel, phased, and pilot deployment options against project constraints and risk.
Trigger this skill when
- A release, deployment, rollout, cutover, or environment promotion needs explicit operational review.
- You need deployment outputs that can feed engineering, operations, governance, or assessment work.
- The delivery plan risks confusion between readiness signals and actual release safety.
Expected inputs
- release context
- deployment constraints
- risk tolerance
- rollback expectations
- user/operational impact
Deliverables
- recommended rollout mode
- tradeoff table
- selection rationale
- deployment prerequisites
- open risks
Operating procedure
- Clarify the release context, deployment path, change window, and operational constraints.
- Separate what is proven, tested, approved, or rehearsed from what is merely assumed.
- Produce the skill-specific artifact or review output.
- Surface risks, dependencies, timing gaps, ownership gaps, and rollback concerns explicitly.
- Recommend the next best handoff instead of trying to solve the entire release lifecycle at once.
Quality gates
- The output is specific to the current release context.
- Uncertainty, dependencies, and decision blockers are visible.
- The result is usable by an engineering lead, release manager, SRE/ops owner, or assessment team.
- Operational safety, not only delivery speed, is reflected in the recommendation.
Handoff targets
- deployment-risk-checker
- go-live-readiness-reviewer
- environment-promotion-checker
Output style
- Be explicit about operational risk, timing, ownership, and reversibility.
- Prefer executable artifacts over broad process prose.
- Surface evidence gaps instead of inventing readiness.
- Keep the result usable in real runbooks, tickets, release docs, and repo workflows.
Failure modes to avoid
- Do not confuse “mostly tested” with release safety.
- Do not assume rollback works because it was written down once.
- Do not hide configuration drift or approval gaps.
- Do not optimize for release speed at the expense of operational recovery.
Minimum output skeleton
## Summary
## Findings
## Structured outputs
## Risks / blockers
## Open questions
## Recommended next skill