skill · foundations
PO foundations
A six-week, ten-step path. By the end of it you have run one full cycle — predicted something, witnessed something, ran a check, written a model update, and contributed one refinement back to the corpus. You are not a senior PO. You are a PO whose first cycle produced a real artefact the team can use.
How a skill works in this corpus
A skill is not a reading list. It is a scaffolded sequence of read → practice → check → reflect, anchored to your real cycle. Bring a real story from your sprint to each step that asks for it. The skill is doing its job when your work output this month is better than last month, not when you have ticked ten boxes.
Mastery looks like
When you finish this path, you can:
- Sit with a named person and write a brief that begins with their day, not your concept.
- Write a prediction that has all five fields, including a baseline you witnessed.
- Hold a 45-minute amigos session and produce Gherkin a developer and QA can defend.
- Run a check on the date in the brief and write a five-line signal reading.
- Write a model update that another PO can read without you in the room.
If you cannot do all five at the end, the skill has not finished. Repeat the steps where you got stuck.
Self-rating before you start
Before step 1, rate yourself on a 1–5 for each of these. We will compare at the end.
| 1 — Never | 3 — Sometimes | 5 — Default | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I name the person in every brief | |||
| I capture baselines by observation | |||
| I write a prediction with all five fields | |||
| I hold amigos before code begins | |||
| I run the check on the date in the brief | |||
| I write a model update that lives next to the brief |
Step 1 — Orient yourself in the chain
Goal: know where Volume II sits in the chain and why this skill is foundational.
Read:
- Volume I · Strategy & Direction · Introduction — context for what comes before Volume II
- Volume II · Discovery & Brief · Introduction
- The chain map
Practice prompt: in your own words, write three sentences explaining what Volume II's job is, what it inherits from Volume I, and what it hands to Volume III. Save this to your notes — you will compare it to the version you write at step 10.
Mini-check: if your three sentences could equally describe a Discovery sprint at any company, you have not yet absorbed the corpus's stance. Re-read The Five Stations and try again — the corpus is opinionated about how Discovery happens.
Step 2 — Witness one moment in person
Goal: experience the difference between observation and interview.
Read:
Worked example: the Gal grades a CS101 final observation note in Volume II · Observation is your reference shape.
Practice prompt: schedule one 90-minute observation session this week with a real named person who uses something your team built or maintains. Sit next to them. Take time-stamped notes in the corpus's observation-note format. Do not interview. At the end, ask only the corpus's three anchored questions: what was that thing you did at [time], and why?
Mini-check: when you read your notes, can you identify at least one workaround the person uses that they have stopped noticing? If no, you were watching the screen, not the person. Read the note example again — Gal stops looking at the timer in the LMS is the kind of detail you are looking for.
Step 3 — Map a journey
Goal: convert the observation into a journey map.
Read:
Practice prompt: draw J1–Jn for the activity you observed. Mark friction with the three labels (cognitive / mechanical / domain-mismatch). Pick one moment to anchor a brief.
Mini-check: if you have more than 15 steps, you are at task-level not activity-level. Compress.
Step 4 — Write a prediction
Goal: the central act of Volume II.
Read:
Worked example: the Gal grading cycle prediction in Practice · Writing predictions · A complete prediction.
Practice prompt: write a prediction for the journey-step friction you anchored in step 3. Use the template. Do not skip the baseline. Witness it — sit with the same person again with a stopwatch.
Mini-check (Clinic): read A brief that didn't witness. Find the three errors before reading the diagnosis. Then look at your own prediction. Does it contain any of those three patterns?
Step 5 — Sign a brief and book a check date
Goal: the brief becomes a commitment.
Read:
Practice prompt: write the full Feature Brief — Experience snapshot (150–200 words, named person), purpose, in scope, out of scope, prediction, success signal, open questions. Get a Designer and a Tech Lead to sign. Put the check date in your calendar with a 1-hour block.
Pair task: review your brief with a more senior PO. Specifically ask them: which of the experience snapshots in our corpus would mine most resemble — and what's still missing?
Step 6 — Hold amigos before code begins
Goal: the smallest unit of shared meaning.
Read:
Practice prompt: when one of the Epic's stories is ready, hold a 45-minute amigos session — you, the developer assigned, the QA. Produce three Gherkin scenarios, including at least one negative case. Use the corpus's Given/When/Then form (the Given names the person's situation, not the system state).
Mini-check: if the developer or QA asks you a question during amigos that you cannot answer from the brief, the brief is not ready. Pause amigos. Re-walk the brief. Resume.
Step 7 — Watch the first 48 hours
Goal: transition from build to watch.
Read:
Practice prompt: when the flag enables, you watch the dashboards. Not support tickets. Use the SLO thresholds. Hold the discipline of not reacting incorrectly — note things, do not act on first-hour noise.
Pair task: sit with the Tech Lead for the first hour. They watch the system signals; you watch the leading product signals (adoption, completion). Compare notes at hour 2.
Step 8 — Run the check
Goal: Volume V Part 2 against your own prediction.
Read:
Practice prompt: on the date in your brief, run the check. Do not move the date. If the result is not what you hoped, that is the second-most-valuable outcome. If you forgot to run it, that is the worthless outcome — name it as such, do not dress it up.
Write a five-line signal reading next to the brief. Use the corpus form: prediction / baseline / target / measured / gap.
Mini-check: does your signal reading have a gap line that names one specific thing? "Better than predicted" alone is not a gap line. "Better than predicted — we suspect the keyboard shortcut absorbed more time than the deep-link navigation we built for" is.
Step 9 — Retrospective and model update
Goal: Volume V Parts 5 and 6 — the step most teams skip.
Read:
Practice prompt: hold the 60-minute retrospective with the trio. Three questions, one change, owned, dated, testable. Then — separately, the same week — write the model update. Close assumptions in your brief. Add new ones. Update at least one template, checklist, or glossary entry.
Retro on your own work: look back at your prediction (step 4). Were the five fields all truly there, or did one decay during the cycle? Most often the check method is the field that drifts. If yours did, write a one-line note for your future self: next cycle, do this differently.
Step 10 — Teach back, contribute back
Goal: the Feynman gate. You don't know it until you can write it.
Practice prompt: write a one-page guide for the next new PO joining your team. What I wish I'd known before my first cycle. Use the corpus's voice — person-first, terse, witnessed-not-described. Limit yourself to one page.
Authoring contribution: find one thing in this corpus that, after running your cycle, you now know is wrong, missing, or could be sharper. Open a PR. The corpus is meant to evolve; this is how it does.
Self-rating after: rate yourself again on the same six dimensions you rated at the start. Compare. Where did you move? Where didn't you? Bring that gap to your next cycle.
After this path
You have run one cycle. Two more and foundational becomes practitioner. The next paths in sequence:
- PO · Practitioner (coming) — running multiple Epics, holding the trio across two simultaneous cycles, writing PDRs that other POs read.
- PO · Advanced (coming) — initiative-level discovery, portfolio decisions, kill briefs.
Stuck?
Common stuck points and where to go:
| If you got stuck at | Read |
|---|---|
| Step 2 — couldn't find someone to observe | Volume II · When observation is impossible |
| Step 4 — prediction feels arbitrary | Clinic · A brief that didn't witness |
| Step 6 — amigos didn't produce shared meaning | Volume III · When amigos surfaces a problem |
| Step 8 — date passed without the check | This is the worthless outcome. Name it. Schedule a retrospective topic. Do not paper over. |
| Step 9 — retrospective produced a list, not a change | Re-read Volume V · The Retrospective — one change. owned. dated. testable. |