Quarterly planning prep

Planning meetings go badly when the first hour is spent figuring out what happened last quarter. The pre-read does that work in advance, so the meeting is spent deciding.

Before you start

If .agents/product-ops-context.md exists (or .claude/product-ops-context.md), read it first. Use the team, owners, tools, meetings, and metric definitions it already has, and only ask for what's missing or specific to this task. If it doesn't exist, go ahead with what you're given, and suggest running product-ops-context once so the next skill doesn't have to ask.

Step 1: Look back

From the source (last quarter's goals, roadmap, metrics, release notes), record:

Then list:

• Shipped: the main things that went live
• Carried over: planned, not finished, with current status
• Dropped: removed on purpose, and why

Use the numbers and reasons in the source. Don't grade work as a success or failure beyond what the targets show.

Step 2: Gather inputs

Pull together what the team should weigh, each with its source:

• Business: company goals, revenue targets, commitments leadership has made
• Customers: top themes from feedback and the VoC digest, escalations, renewal risks
• Sales: deals blocked on missing capability, with named stakes where given
• Product health: KPIs that are off track (see the kpi-health-check skill)
• Tech: debt, reliability, or platform work engineering says can't wait
• Commitments already made: anything promised to customers, partners, or leadership with a date

Keep each input to one or two lines with evidence. Mark anything that's an opinion as an opinion.

Step 3: Capacity

Record what the source says about people and time: team size, planned leave, hiring, and how much capacity is already committed to carried-over work, support rotation, or keep-the-lights-on work. If capacity isn't given, flag it as missing. Planning without it is guessing.

Step 4: Frame the decisions

List the specific choices planning needs to make, not a list of topics:

• "Do we finish X before starting Y?"
• "Which of these three customer asks makes the quarter?"
• "Does tech debt get a fixed share of capacity?"

Output

# [Quarter] planning pre-read — [Team]
**Planning session:** [date] · **Read by:** [date]

## Last quarter in one paragraph
[What we set out to do and what happened.]

## Results
[Table from Step 1]

## Carrying into next quarter
- [Item] — [status]

## Inputs to weigh
### Business · Customers · Sales · Product health · Tech · Commitments
- [Input] — [evidence / source]

## Capacity
- [What's known] · Missing: [what's not]

## Decisions this planning session needs to make
1. [Decision]

## Open questions before the session
- [Question] — ask [name]

The pre-read informs the plan; it doesn't propose one. Don't rank priorities unless asked.

Related skills

• kpi-health-check — last quarter's results
• voice-of-customer-digest — customer input for the pre-read
• roadmap-hygiene — clean the roadmap before planning
• cross-team-dependency-map — show what each plan depends on