Plan Work¶
ContributorsPaul Atkins, Myles Henaghan
Plans should include:
- clear objective and scope
- risk-ordered execution
- explicit dependencies
- acceptance and exit criteria
- evidence logging checkpoints
Phase naming¶
Name each phase for the condition that is true when it completes, not the work it contains, and number phases in delivery order. Full rules, rewrite table, and a worked six-phase example: plan-effort-estimate/references/phase-naming.md.
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Phase A — Direct-read implementation | Phase 1 - Reads are served directly from the new source |
| Phase B — Parity and cutover | Phase 5 - Production runs on the new source with accepted parity evidence |
Outcome labels double as exit criteria, so the phase table and the acceptance criteria stop drifting apart.
Effort sizing¶
Route to the correct scale by plan lifecycle stage — see effort-scales.yaml.
| Stage | Scale | Skill |
|---|---|---|
| Gap analysis, remediation draft, sprint/Jira sizing | Wall-clock T-shirt (Trivial / Small / Medium / Large) | remediation-plan |
| Active WIP execution, progress burn-down | Fibonacci (1–13) + *.effort.json |
plan-effort-estimate |
Planning phase — size tasks for human team capacity and stakeholder timelines. Decisions that block work are tracked separately (not as effort).
Execution phase — when the plan goes WIP, create a *.effort.json sidecar beside
the plan markdown, re-size steps with Fibonacci points, and run
summarize-effort.mjs for deterministic progress totals. Use the indicative mapping
in the taxonomy as a starting point only — re-size for AI-assisted delivery context.
Status presentation follows plan-status.yaml.
WIP document layout¶
When a plan enters active execution, follow the scan-first layout in plan-effort-estimate/references/plan-layout.md and copy the skeleton from wip-plan-template.md.
Fixed top-of-doc order after title/metadata:
- 👀 progress block + phase status table (
summarize-effort.mjs --markdown-top) - Recent progress (dated, evidence-based)
- Goal (one paragraph)
- Plan body
- Effort breakdown at bottom (
--markdown-breakdown)