{"id":"2a334230-d4b7-4079-a371-9d030a77e82c","shortId":"6saHBA","kind":"skill","title":"tool-foundation-sprint-readiness","tagline":"Pre-sprint diagnostic that determines whether a team should run a Foundation Sprint now, postpone it, or do prerequisite work first. Produces a Go / Conditional Go / Wait verdict with diagnosis, recommended preconditions, attendee list, and pre-sprint activities. Use when a team ","description":"<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 -->\n\n# Foundation Sprint Readiness\n\nAssess whether a Foundation Sprint fits the team's current situation. Most sprints that fail were sprints that should not have been run. A 30-45 minute readiness diagnostic catches that failure mode before two days of facilitated work are spent.\n\nFamily contract: [`docs/reference/skill-families/foundation-sprint-skills-contract.md`](../../docs/reference/skill-families/foundation-sprint-skills-contract.md). This skill is a member of `foundation-sprint-skills` and conforms to the family frontmatter and Decider Checkpoint requirements.\n\n## When to Use\n\n- A team is considering starting a Foundation Sprint and needs a fast diagnosis before committing two days.\n- A founder or PM has a \"should we run a Foundation Sprint?\" question and wants structured input rather than a vibes check.\n- An existing sprint commitment is on the calendar and the team wants to validate that prerequisites are in place.\n- Re-running a Foundation Sprint after invalidated assumptions: use to confirm new context is ready.\n\n## When NOT to Use\n\n- The team has already decided to run the sprint and just needs the brief. Use `tool-foundation-sprint-brief` instead.\n- The team needs deep customer discovery: run customer research or problem framing first; the Foundation Sprint depends on existing customer knowledge.\n- The decision is small and a full Foundation Sprint is overkill. Use a lighter prioritization or decision tool.\n- No Decider is available and one cannot be appointed. Foundation Sprint requires fast strategic calls; without authority it produces options without commitment.\n\n## What This Skill Produces\n\nA single bundled artifact with five sections:\n\n1. **Readiness verdict**: Go / Conditional Go / Wait\n2. **Diagnosis**: what is in place, what is missing, what is uncertain\n3. **Recommended preconditions** (when verdict is Wait or Conditional Go): the prerequisite work the team should do before the sprint\n4. **Recommended attendee list** (when verdict is Go or Conditional Go): the 3-5 people who should be in the room, with role expectations\n5. **Pre-sprint activities** (when verdict is Go): the prep work to complete in the days before Day 1\n\nSee `references/TEMPLATE.md` for the canonical structure and `references/EXAMPLE.md` for a worked example using the Brainshelf book-catalog thread.\n\n## Inference Inputs\n\nThe skill runs an inference pass over these inputs to produce the verdict:\n\n| Input | What the skill does with it |\n|---|---|\n| Initiative description | Determines whether a Foundation Sprint is the right tool (vs problem framing, customer research, or a Design Sprint) |\n| Team composition draft | Checks roster against the Foundation Sprint role requirements; flags missing roles |\n| Decider name and availability | Confirms Decider can attend both days; flags partial availability as Conditional Go risk |\n| Existing customer/market knowledge level (self-assessed 1-10) | Below 5 indicates deep discovery is needed first; 5-7 indicates Conditional Go with research prep; 8+ indicates Go |\n| (Optional) Existing competitor and alternative knowledge | Flags gaps that can be closed by overnight prep |\n| (Optional) Logistics constraints | Confirms two days can actually be cleared |\n\nIf a load-bearing input is missing or low-confidence, the skill flags it explicitly and proposes how to close the gap before the sprint.\n\n## Readiness Criteria (8 Canonical Checks)\n\nThe skill evaluates the team against these eight criteria, drawn from Knapp/Zeratsky (Click) and Character Capital's Foundation Sprint guide:\n\n1. **Initiative is named and concrete.** The team can name the project, product area, or strategic question.\n2. **The stakes are meaningful.** A wrong starting direction would be costly.\n3. **The team has existing knowledge.** Real customer, market, competitor, or domain context to make informed choices.\n4. **The Decider is available.** Strategic calls can be made during the sprint.\n5. **The team is small enough.** No more than five core decision participants is preferred.\n6. **Inputs are collected.** Existing research, customer examples, competitor notes, metrics are ready.\n7. **The output has a path to testing.** The team can use a Design Sprint, experiment, customer research, or another validation method afterward.\n8. **The organization tolerates explicit tradeoffs.** Foundation Sprint forces choosing a top bet and a backup, not preserving every possibility.\n\n| Pattern | Verdict |\n|---|---|\n| All 8 criteria met cleanly | **Go** |\n| 1-2 criteria are \"yellow flags\" but addressable in evening prep | **Conditional Go** with documented prep |\n| 3 or more criteria fail, or any of 1-4 is a hard fail | **Wait** with recommended prerequisite work |\n\nTreat the criteria as load-bearing, not a checklist to game. A team that papers over a real gap with \"yes, technically\" should get a Conditional Go with the gap surfaced.\n\n## Common Pitfalls\n\n- **Skipping the diagnostic because \"we're going to run it anyway.\"** This is the most common cause of failed sprints. The diagnostic costs 45 minutes; the failed sprint costs 16 hours of team time plus opportunity cost.\n- **Treating Conditional Go as Go without doing the prep.** Conditional Go means \"Go after closing these gaps.\" If the gaps are not closed by Day 1 morning, the sprint enters the failure mode the diagnostic was meant to prevent.\n- **Confusing readiness assessment with problem framing.** This skill assesses whether to run a Foundation Sprint, not whether the team has the right problem. If the problem is unclear, the verdict is Wait with \"do problem framing first\" as the precondition.\n- **No Decider, no sprint.** A team with no Decider available is not ready, full stop. Appointing a \"Decider for the day\" who lacks real authority does not solve this.\n- **Cargo-cult readiness.** Reading the criteria and answering yes to all eight without checking does not produce readiness. The skill's value is in the honest diagnosis.\n\n## Canonical Sources\n\n- Knapp, J., and Zeratsky, J. *Click: How to Make What People Want*. Foundation Sprint readiness guidance.\n- Character Capital. \"Foundation Sprint guide.\" https://www.character.vc/guide/foundation-sprint\n- Design Sprint Academy. \"Foundation Sprint readiness criteria for enterprise.\" Used for the enterprise-context adjustments to canonical readiness.\n\n## Cross-Skill Usage\n\nThis skill is the entry point of the foundation-sprint-skills family. It has no prerequisites (the `metadata.prerequisites` field is intentionally empty).\n\nWhen the verdict is Go, the natural next invocation is `tool-foundation-sprint-brief` to set up the sprint logistics. When the verdict is Wait, the team typically does prerequisite work (problem framing, customer research) before re-invoking this skill.\n\n`tool-note-and-vote` may be invoked once during the readiness conversation if the team disagrees on whether a Foundation Sprint is the right tool. In practice, this is rare; the diagnostic is usually conclusive.\n\n## Decider Checkpoint\n\nThis skill ends with a Decider Checkpoint in `references/TEMPLATE.md`. The Decider signs off on the verdict (Go / Conditional Go / Wait) and explicitly accepts the diagnosis. 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