phase-planner-eng
Agent: VP Engineering
L1 engineering leader (1x) responsible for spec intake review, team allocation, architecture oversight, velocity monitoring, and go-live approvals. Owns engineering delivery from initial specification through production launch.
Department ethos: ideal-engineering.md
Skill Description
Plans the engineering activities, milestones, and sprint allocation for each delivery phase, producing a sequenced execution timeline.
When to Use
- When an approved spec has effort estimates and team allocations but no execution timeline.
- When a multi-phase delivery needs its phases defined with clear boundaries and handoff criteria.
- When a delivery is being re-planned after a significant scope change or team reallocation.
Workflow
- Collect inputs: Gather effort estimates, team allocation, dependency map, architecture decisions, and milestone definitions. Deliverable: planning inputs checklist.
- Define phase boundaries: Divide the delivery into phases with clear entry and exit criteria. Align boundaries to meaningful integration points or demo-able increments. Deliverable: phase boundary definitions.
- Sequence activities: Map tasks to sprints within each phase, respecting dependency ordering and team capacity. Identify the critical path. Deliverable: sprint-level activity timeline with critical path highlighted.
- Identify phase risks: Flag risks specific to each phase (e.g., key-person dependency, external API availability, infrastructure provisioning lead time). Deliverable: per-phase risk annotations.
- Publish plan: Document the phase plan with timeline, milestones, team assignments, and risk callouts. Deliverable: phase plan document distributed to all stakeholders.
Anti-Patterns
- Waterfall in disguise: Creating sequential phases where each phase is a monolithic block with no iterative feedback loops. Why: large phases without checkpoints hide problems until they are expensive to fix.
- Ignoring the critical path: Planning without identifying which tasks are on the critical path. Why: non-critical-path optimizations waste effort while the actual bottleneck goes unaddressed.
- Calendar-stuffing: Filling every sprint to 100% capacity with zero slack. Why: no slack means no ability to absorb surprises, turning every unexpected issue into a schedule slip.
Output
On success: Produces a phase plan document containing phase boundaries with entry/exit criteria, sprint-level activity timeline, critical path, milestone dates, team assignments, and risk annotations. Delivered to the project management tool and stakeholders.
On failure: Report which planning inputs are missing or inconsistent, the impact on plan reliability, and what must be resolved before planning can complete.
Related Skills
1---2name: phase-planner-eng3description: This skill plans the engineering activities and milestones for each delivery phase. Use when asked to create a phase plan, define the engineering roadmap for a delivery, or sequence work across sprints. Also consider when effort estimates and team allocations are ready but no execution timeline exists. Suggest when a project is about to start execution without a structured phase plan.4---56# phase-planner-eng78## Agent: VP Engineering910L1 engineering leader (1x) responsible for spec intake review, team allocation, architecture oversight, velocity monitoring, and go-live approvals. Owns engineering delivery from initial specification through production launch.1112Department ethos: [ideal-engineering.md](../../../../departments/engineering/ideal-engineering.md)1314## Skill Description1516Plans the engineering activities, milestones, and sprint allocation for each delivery phase, producing a sequenced execution timeline.1718## When to Use1920- When an approved spec has effort estimates and team allocations but no execution timeline.21- When a multi-phase delivery needs its phases defined with clear boundaries and handoff criteria.22- When a delivery is being re-planned after a significant scope change or team reallocation.2324## Workflow25261. **Collect inputs**: Gather effort estimates, team allocation, dependency map, architecture decisions, and milestone definitions. Deliverable: planning inputs checklist.272. **Define phase boundaries**: Divide the delivery into phases with clear entry and exit criteria. Align boundaries to meaningful integration points or demo-able increments. Deliverable: phase boundary definitions.283. **Sequence activities**: Map tasks to sprints within each phase, respecting dependency ordering and team capacity. Identify the critical path. Deliverable: sprint-level activity timeline with critical path highlighted.294. **Identify phase risks**: Flag risks specific to each phase (e.g., key-person dependency, external API availability, infrastructure provisioning lead time). Deliverable: per-phase risk annotations.305. **Publish plan**: Document the phase plan with timeline, milestones, team assignments, and risk callouts. Deliverable: phase plan document distributed to all stakeholders.3132## Anti-Patterns3334- **Waterfall in disguise**: Creating sequential phases where each phase is a monolithic block with no iterative feedback loops. *Why*: large phases without checkpoints hide problems until they are expensive to fix.35- **Ignoring the critical path**: Planning without identifying which tasks are on the critical path. *Why*: non-critical-path optimizations waste effort while the actual bottleneck goes unaddressed.36- **Calendar-stuffing**: Filling every sprint to 100% capacity with zero slack. *Why*: no slack means no ability to absorb surprises, turning every unexpected issue into a schedule slip.3738## Output3940**On success**: Produces a phase plan document containing phase boundaries with entry/exit criteria, sprint-level activity timeline, critical path, milestone dates, team assignments, and risk annotations. Delivered to the project management tool and stakeholders.4142**On failure**: Report which planning inputs are missing or inconsistent, the impact on plan reliability, and what must be resolved before planning can complete.4344## Related Skills4546- [`effort-estimator-eng`](../../../engineering/vp-engineering/effort-estimator-eng/SKILL.md) -- effort estimates are a required input to phase planning.47- [`milestone-definer-eng`](../../../engineering/vp-engineering/milestone-definer-eng/SKILL.md) -- milestones defined here anchor the phase plan.
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