iterate-refinement-notes
This skill documents the outcomes of backlog refinement sessions, capturing estimated stories, discussion points, decisions made, and action items. Use it during or immediately after refinement meetings to create a shared record for absent team members and to establish historical context before sprint planning or when stories require re-evaluation after time has passed.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills /tmp/iterate-refinement-notes && cp -r /tmp/iterate-refinement-notes/skills/iterate-refinement-notes ~/.claude/skills/iterate-refinement-notesSKILL.md
<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 --> # Refinement Notes Refinement notes capture the outcomes of backlog refinement (grooming) sessions.what was discussed, what was estimated, and what decisions were made. They serve as a quick reference for team members who missed the session and a historical record of how stories evolved from idea to ready-for-sprint. ## When to Use - During refinement sessions to capture decisions in real-time - After refinement to share outcomes with absent team members - When onboarding new team members to explain backlog context - Before sprint planning to review what's been refined - When stories need re-refinement due to time elapsed ## When NOT to Use - You need the stories themselves written -> use `deliver-user-stories` - You need a general meeting summary, not a backlog-refinement record -> use `foundation-meeting-recap` - You are running the retrospective ceremony -> use `iterate-retrospective` - Refined stories need their failure scenarios enumerated -> use `deliver-edge-cases` ## Instructions When asked to document refinement notes, follow these steps: 1. **Record Session Metadata** Note the date, attendees, and duration. This helps track who was part of decisions and when discussions happened. 2. **List Stories Discussed** For each story, capture the outcome: estimated points, refined status, key discussion points, and any modifications made to the original scope. 3. **Document Questions Raised** Questions that couldn't be answered in the session need owners and due dates. Don't let them disappear.they often block sprint planning. 4. **Capture Decisions Made** Record any scope decisions, technical approaches agreed upon, or priority changes. These decisions are valuable context that gets lost without documentation. 5. **Note Action Items** Any follow-up work needed before stories are sprint-ready: mockups to create, technical spikes to run, stakeholders to consult. 6. **Flag Blocked Stories** Clearly identify stories that can't proceed until blockers are resolved. Include what the blocker is and who owns resolution. 7. **Plan Next Session** Note what should be refined next and any preparation needed. ## Output Format Use the template in `references/TEMPLATE.md` to structure the output. Complete notes fill every template section: Session Info; Summary; Stories Refined; Stories Summary Table; Questions Raised; Decisions Made; Action Items; Blocked Stories; Parking Lot; and Next Session. ## Quality Checklist Before finalizing, verify: - [ ] All discussed stories have outcomes recorded - [ ] Open questions have owners assigned - [ ] Decisions are captured with enough context - [ ] Blocked stories are clearly flagged - [ ] A reader who missed the session can tell each story's outcome and what happens next without asking ## Examples See `references/EXAMPLE.md` for a completed example.
Run an ad-hoc ordered chain of pm-skills with shared context (ephemeral; routes to the pm-workflow-orchestrator)
Defines a testable hypothesis with clear success metrics and a validation approach. Use when forming assumptions to test or aligning a team on what success looks like, before any experiment is designed. To design the A/B test or experiment that will validate the hypothesis, use measure-experiment-design.
Creates a Jobs to be Done canvas capturing the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of a customer job. Use when deeply understanding customer motivations, designing for jobs, or reframing product positioning.
Creates an opportunity solution tree connecting a desired outcome to customer opportunities and candidate solutions, preventing solution-first jumps in continuous discovery. Use when structuring scattered feature ideas or communicating how the roadmap traces to outcomes. For ranking an existing flat list of candidates, use define-prioritization-framework instead; this skill discovers the list, it does not score one.
Run applicable prioritization frameworks (RICE, ICE, MoSCoW, Weighted Scoring, Kano) against a list of features or initiatives. Produces a comparison table showing where rankings agree and diverge across frameworks, and an executive summary with recommendation. Framework applicability is filtered by data availability; Kano requires customer research. Refuses to fabricate scores; produces an estimation scaffold when input data is missing.
Creates a clear problem framing document with user impact, business context, and success criteria. Use when starting a new initiative, realigning a drifted project, or communicating up to leadership.
Generates structured Given/When/Then acceptance criteria for a user story or feature slice, covering the happy path, key failure scenarios, and non-functional expectations in testable form. Use when turning requirements into verifiable scenarios for engineering handoff and QA sign-off. For a dedicated catalog of boundary conditions, error states, and recovery paths across a feature, use deliver-edge-cases; to write the stories themselves, use deliver-user-stories.
Documents edge cases, error states, boundary conditions, race conditions, and recovery paths for a feature - the systematic catalog of what can go wrong and the failure modes to design for. Use during specification to map the failure surface and ensure comprehensive coverage, or during QA planning to identify boundary and limit scenarios to test. Distinct from deliver-acceptance-criteria, which writes story-level Given/When/Then checks; this skill produces the whole-feature edge-case catalog.