rampstack-pm

Run a structured after-action review (postmortem, retrospective) on a launch, incident, or completed project to capture timeline, root cause analysis, contributing factors, and actionable lessons. Use this skill whenever the user wants to run a postmortem, retrospective, AAR, or after-action review on any past event. Triggers on after-action report, AAR, postmortem, retrospective, retro, post-incident review, what went well what didn't, lessons learned, blameless postmortem, root cause analysis, RCA, five whys. Also triggers when the user has just shipped something or just resolved an incident and wants to capture learnings.

Running closed and open betas that produce real signal. Beta participant selection, structured feedback collection, beta-to-GA decision criteria, and the difference between soft-launch (no structure, no signal), kitchen-sink (everyone in, no actionable feedback), and structured beta (calibrated cohort, intentional feedback loops, clear graduation criteria). Triggers on beta program, alpha test, beta cohort, beta participant, beta feedback, beta to GA decision, design partner, early access program, closed beta, open beta, RC release. Also triggers when a feature is approaching launch and the team needs structured pre-GA validation, when prior betas produced noise rather than signal, or when the team has soft-launched before but wants more structured feedback this time.

Turning research artifacts into actionable PM insight. Customer interviews, user research notes, support ticket reviews, sales call transcripts, survey data, in-app feedback, all synthesized into the decisions they are meant to inform. The discipline of moving from raw discovery data to clear product direction without losing signal in the synthesis or fabricating insight that was not actually there. Triggers on research synthesis, customer interview synthesis, user research analysis, discovery readout, research insights, sales call analysis, support ticket analysis, qualitative data analysis. Also triggers when a team has done research but cannot turn it into decisions, when synthesis is producing pretty decks but no roadmap movement, or when an upcoming PM decision needs to be grounded in research already conducted.

The operational playbook for launching a feature well. Positioning, internal alignment, customer comms, sales enablement, support readiness, rollout strategy, monitoring with pre-defined rollback triggers, post-launch measurement against spec hypotheses, and the discipline that distinguishes shipping from releasing from actually launching. Triggers on launch plan, feature launch, launch checklist, ship vs release, rollout strategy, gradual rollout, sales enablement, support readiness, launch announcement, post-launch measurement, launch failure, declared victory too early. Also triggers when planning a launch (any size, any segment), auditing an existing launch process, fixing the we shipped it but the metric did not move problem, or building a launch checklist for the team.

The Jobs-to-be-Done framework as applied product methodology. Job statements, struggling moments, hire and fire criteria, the difference between feature-thinking and job-thinking. Honest about where JTBD adds clarity (discovery, prioritization, positioning) and where it becomes performative ritual (job-statement workshops that do not drive decisions, persona-theater disguised as JTBD). Triggers on jobs-to-be-done, JTBD, job statements, struggling moments, hire criteria, fire criteria, switch triggers, functional emotional social jobs, outcome-driven innovation. Also triggers when a team is over-relying on feature-request lists or persona archetypes that do not drive product decisions, when a positioning conversation needs the framing JTBD provides, or when discovery is producing outputs that do not connect to product strategy.