Task Decomposition

Overview

Decompose a technical plan into actionable development tasks. Each task is atomic, has clear acceptance criteria traceable to specification requirements, and includes dependency information for optimal execution ordering.

When to Use

• After technical plan is approved, before implementation
• When breaking down a large feature into implementable units
• When identifying parallelization opportunities in a task set
• When estimating effort and critical path for a feature

Key Principle

Every task must trace back to at least one specification requirement. Tasks must be atomic enough for a single development session. Dependency graphs must be acyclic.

Process

1. Decompose components - Break architecture components into implementable tasks
2. Define tasks - Each with id, title, description, acceptance criteria, dependencies, effort
3. Build dependency graph - Show task ordering constraints
4. Identify parallel groups - Tasks with no mutual dependencies
5. Determine critical path - Longest dependency chain
6. Generate test tasks - Testing tasks alongside implementation
7. Map to requirements - Traceability from tasks to specification
8. Human review - Approve task list before implementation

Tool Use

Invoke via babysitter process: methodologies/spec-kit/spec-kit-planning (task decomposition phase) Full pipeline: methodologies/spec-kit/spec-kit-orchestrator