Process improvement

Process Improvement

Analyze process bottlenecks and propose improvements for "$ARGUMENTS". Identify recurring themes across retrospectives, map the value stream, and create a prioritized improvement backlog based on impact and effort.

Prerequisites

Check that .project/$ARGUMENTS/00-initiate.md exists. If it does not, tell the user to run an Initiate skill first (e.g., project-charter) and stop.

If the user passes --skip-checks, skip the prerequisite check and log the skip to .project/$ARGUMENTS/skip-log.md with a timestamp and reason.

Process

1. Read existing context:

   • Read .project/$ARGUMENTS/00-initiate.md for project context and team setup
   • Read .project/$ARGUMENTS/03-review.md if it exists (for sprint review results, sprint metrics, velocity trends, and commitment ratios)
   • Read .project/$ARGUMENTS/04-improve.md if it exists (for retrospective action items, previous process improvements, and team health data)
   • Read .project/$ARGUMENTS/02-sprint.md if it exists (for standup history, blocker log, and daily flow patterns)
   • Read .project/$ARGUMENTS/01-plan.md if it exists (for sprint planning data and estimation accuracy)

2. Identify recurring themes across retrospectives:

   • Review all retrospective action items and themes from .project/$ARGUMENTS/04-improve.md
   • Flag any blocker, complaint, or theme that has appeared in 2 or more retrospectives
   • Categorize recurring themes: process issues, tooling gaps, communication breakdowns, skill gaps, external dependencies
   • Note which action items were committed to but never completed — these represent systemic resistance to change
   • Identify the top 3 recurring themes by frequency and severity

3. Analyze flow bottlenecks:

   • Examine where work piles up in the team's workflow by reviewing sprint data
   • Check each stage for signs of bottleneck:
     • Backlog refinement — are stories entering sprints without clear requirements?
     • Development — are developers blocked waiting for decisions, designs, or dependencies?
     • Code review — are PRs sitting in review for more than 1 day on average?
     • Testing — is QA a single point of failure? Are bugs found late in the cycle?
     • Deployment — is the release process manual, risky, or infrequent?
   • Quantify each bottleneck where possible: average wait time, number of items stuck, frequency of occurrence
   • Rank bottlenecks by their impact on overall flow (the biggest constraint limits the whole system)

4. Map the current value stream:

   • Document the journey of a typical story from idea to production
   • For each stage, estimate:
     • Process time — how long active work takes at this stage
     • Wait time — how long the item sits idle between stages
     • Rework rate — how often items are sent back to a previous stage
   • Calculate total lead time (idea to production) and total process time (actual work)
   • Calculate flow efficiency: process time / lead time x 100% (typical teams are 15-25% efficient)
   • Identify the stages with the highest wait time — these are the improvement opportunities

5. Propose specific process changes:

   • For each identified bottleneck or recurring theme, propose a concrete process change
   • Each proposal must include:
     • Problem statement — what is happening and its measurable impact
     • Proposed change — what specifically to do differently
     • Expected outcome — what improvement to expect and how to measure it
     • Risks — what could go wrong with this change
   • Ensure proposals are actionable by the team (not "management should do X" but things the team controls)
   • Consider both technical solutions (automation, tooling) and process solutions (ceremonies, agreements)

6. Estimate effort for each change:

   • Rate each proposed change on implementation effort: Low (< 1 day), Medium (1-5 days), High (> 5 days)
   • Consider the type of effort required: tooling setup, habit change, organizational approval, training
   • Note which changes require buy-in from outside the team (stakeholders, other teams, leadership)
   • Identify any changes that can be tried as experiments with easy rollback

7. Prioritize improvements by impact/effort ratio:

   • Score each improvement on impact (1-5) and effort (1-5, where 1 is lowest effort)
   • Calculate the impact/effort ratio for each improvement
   • Categorize into quadrants:
     • Quick wins (high impact, low effort) — do these first
     • Strategic investments (high impact, high effort) — plan and schedule these
     • Easy fills (low impact, low effort) — do when convenient
     • Avoid (low impact, high effort) — deprioritize or discard
   • Recommend the top 3 improvements to pursue in the next sprint or iteration

8. Create improvement backlog:

   • List all proposed improvements as backlog items, ordered by priority
   • For each item, include: description, expected impact, effort estimate, owner (if assigned), target date
   • Mark which items are experiments (time-boxed trials) vs. permanent changes
   • Note dependencies between improvements (e.g., "automate deployment" before "increase release frequency")
   • Schedule a review checkpoint to evaluate whether implemented changes had the expected effect

9. Write the artifact — append to .project/$ARGUMENTS/04-improve.md under a ## Process Improvement section:

   • Recurring Themes — top themes from retrospectives with frequency and severity
   • Flow Bottlenecks — ranked bottlenecks with quantified impact
   • Value Stream Map — stages from idea to production with process time, wait time, and flow efficiency
   • Proposed Changes — each proposal with problem, solution, expected outcome, and risks
   • Impact/Effort Matrix — all improvements plotted by impact and effort with quadrant classification
   • Improvement Backlog — prioritized list of improvements with owners and target dates
   • Review Checkpoint — date and criteria for evaluating whether changes are working

Output

Process improvement analysis appended to .project/$ARGUMENTS/04-improve.md. Present a summary highlighting:

• Top 3 recurring themes across retrospectives
• Biggest flow bottleneck and its measured impact
• Flow efficiency percentage (process time vs. lead time)
• Top 3 recommended improvements (quick wins first)
• Review checkpoint date for evaluating results