Stakeholder Update Writer

stakeholder-update-writer

The single biggest reach multiplier for an SDLC program lead across a at-scale-dev org. One synthesis pass produces three audience-tuned updates — no more re-writing the same content for the CIO email, the eng-lead all-hands, and the IC newsletter.

When to use

• End-of-week or end-of-month program update.
• Triggered by a notable event (regulator action, major Copilot release, incident response).
• Before a leadership review where you need exec-tier sign-off on something.
• Whenever the user says "I need to communicate this to {stakeholder}".

When NOT to use

• Single-audience direct response (email back to one person) — write that directly.
• Verbatim transcripts / meeting minutes — different document type.
• Decision proposals — use decision-memo-writer, or quick-capture for ADRs.

Three tiers

Exec tier (CIO, CISO, eng VP)

Length: ~150-250 words. Reads in 60 seconds.

Focus:

• What materially changed for the org.
• What decisions need exec sign-off in the next 1-4 weeks.
• Risk posture changes (regulator activity, supply-chain incidents, vendor announcements with audit/legal implications).
• Strategic direction shifts.

Voice: declarative, dense, single-syllable verbs. Quantified where possible. No vendor marketing language.

Structure:

• TL;DR (3 sentences)
• 1-3 decisions needed (with proposed answer + risk-if-not-decided)
• Risk + opportunity headline (one each)

Eng lead tier (managers, principal engineers)

Length: ~400-600 words. Reads in 3-5 minutes.

Focus:

• Operational changes their teams should know about.
• Specific action items for their teams (one-week and one-month).
• What to communicate downward to ICs.
• Links to vault notes / research for deeper context.

Voice: explanatory but tight. Assumes domain literacy, doesn't assume operational omniscience.

Structure:

• TL;DR (4-5 bullets)
• What Changed (with [[wikilinks]] to vault research)
• What Your Teams Need to Do (this week / this month)
• Open Questions (for eng-lead-only conversations)

IC tier (individual developers)

Length: ~300-500 words. Reads in 2-3 minutes.

Focus:

• What's changing in their day-to-day dev experience.
• What they need to do (concrete, low-friction).
• What they don't need to do (anti-pattern callouts).
• Where to ask questions.

Voice: friendly, practical, low jargon. Avoid corporate-speak. Use "you" not "ICs."

Structure:

• 3 bullets at top: "What's new", "What to do", "Where to ask"
• Per-topic: short paragraph + a "TL;DR" line
• A FAQ-style "Common questions" closer (often pulled from copilot-faq-answerer / objection-response-library)

Workflow

1. Read recent vault activity via vault-querier:
   • Last 7-14 days of vault/digests/
   • Last 14-30 days of vault/research/
   • Any vault/decisions/ with status: accepted or proposed in the window
   • Active vault/projects/sdlc-modernization.md open questions
2. Read the user's raw notes — anything they typed into the conversation about what to include.
3. Cluster by topic — same as weekly-review's Themes pattern.
4. Per-cluster, draft the 3 tiers — exec / eng-lead / IC. Each tier sees the same underlying fact but with different framing, depth, and call-to-action.
5. Apply the regulated-org lens to exec tier — every item ties to SR 11-7 / FFIEC / OCC / SOX / NYDFS where applicable.
6. Apply the practical-dev lens to IC tier — explicit "what to do" and "what NOT to do".
7. Write via vault-writer.write_insight to vault/insights/YYYY-MM-DD-stakeholder-update-{slug}.md as a single file with the three tiers as ## sections.

Output structure (one file, three tiers)

# Stakeholder Update — {period} — {slug}

## Tier 1 — Exec (CIO / CISO / eng VP)
[150-250 words]

## Tier 2 — Eng Lead (managers / principal engineers)
[400-600 words]

## Tier 3 — IC (individual developers)
[300-500 words]

Each tier is a self-contained, sendable message — the user can copy / paste the relevant tier into the channel that matches the audience.

Composes with

• vault-querier — pulls recent vault activity for context.
• vault-writer.write_insight — persists the update (workflow step 7).
• weekly-review — sometimes the user starts a stakeholder update right after reading the weekly review.
• copilot-faq-answerer and objection-response-library — IC-tier "Common questions" content.
• decision-memo-writer — when a tier-1 exec ask is "we need a decision memo on X."

Acceptance test (for step 15 done-criteria)

Generate one stakeholder update from the past week of vault activity. Confirm:

• File at vault/insights/YYYY-MM-DD-stakeholder-update-{slug}.md with all 3 tiered ## sections.
• Exec tier: ≤250 words, includes 1-3 decisions needed.
• Eng lead tier: 400-600 words with [[wikilinks]] to vault research.
• IC tier: 300-500 words with concrete what-to-do guidance.
• Each tier is self-contained (a stakeholder reading their tier doesn't need to read the others).