45ck retrospective-pattern-finder
Purpose
Find recurring patterns across retrospectives, incidents, and sprint outcomes so improvement work targets causes instead of symptoms.
Trigger this skill when
- The team is working in iterations, sprints, or short delivery cycles.
- Backlog items, sprint outcomes, or team process signals need structured review.
- You need clearer delivery discipline instead of vague “be more agile” advice.
Expected inputs
- retrospective notes
- sprint outcomes
- defect/blocker history
- team feedback
- process context
Deliverables
- pattern summary
- root-cause hypotheses
- repeat issue clusters
- candidate improvement experiments
- follow-up metrics
Operating procedure
- Clarify the delivery context, scope, and timebox.
- Separate what is known from what is assumed or missing.
- Produce the skill-specific artifact or review output.
- Surface coordination, quality, sequencing, or blocker risks explicitly.
- Recommend the next best handoff instead of trying to solve the whole lifecycle at once.
Quality gates
- The output is specific to the current iteration context.
- Risks, ambiguity, and dependencies are visible.
- Advice is actionable within a real team workflow.
- The result does not confuse commitment with aspiration.
Handoff targets
- self-organization-health-check
- regression-discipline-checker
- backlog-groomer
Output style
- Be explicit about tradeoffs and delivery risk.
- Prefer concise operational artifacts over long motivational prose.
- Surface evidence gaps instead of inventing certainty.
- Keep the result usable by engineers, leads, or PMs.
Failure modes to avoid
- Do not treat every backlog item as equally ready.
- Do not hide blocker or dependency risk.
- Do not reward ticket closure over outcome delivery.
- Do not confuse a retrospective observation with a validated root cause.
Minimum output skeleton
## Summary
## Findings
## Structured outputs
## Risks / blockers
## Open questions
## Recommended next skill