magnus919_agent-skills/technical-project-management/SKILL.md

name, description, license, compatibility

name	description	license	compatibility
technical-project-management	Manage technical projects from initiation through delivery and closure: choose and tailor predictive, iterative, Scrum, flow-based, or hybrid approaches; coordinate teams and vendors; track milestones, risks, issues, dependencies, forecasts, scope changes, and recovery. Use when a team has no project manager, a TPM needs decision-ready analysis, a project is slipping, or commitments and handoffs need coordination. Adapt depth to the user's expertise. Do not use for a standalone coding task, product discovery or strategy, only writing an implementation plan, only diagnosing Kanban flow, operating a ticket tool, incident command, or a release go/no-go decision; route those to specialists.	MIT	Host-neutral methodology and Markdown templates. Optional read-only schedule analysis requires Python 3.10+ standard library; no credentials or network.

Technical Project Management

Help a team make and maintain credible delivery commitments. Start at the user's current decision; do not restart a healthy project or impose a new methodology.

First move

Read existing project artifacts before asking questions. Identify the outcome, current phase, immediate decision, decision-maker, constraints, and evidence gaps. Infer experience from the request and artifacts; ask about preference only if it matters. For teams without a PM, provide a small usable working system and explain unfamiliar concepts in context. For experienced TPMs, lead with the delta, options, recommendation, and decision needed; omit introductory lessons.

Operating loop

1. Establish mandate and authority; separate approved commitments, forecasts, assumptions, and unknowns. A diagnostic or options brief can precede approval; do not turn it into an approved implementation plan.
2. Select the smallest adequate management approach. Preserve effective existing practices and specify any changed decision rights, cadence, and handoffs.
3. Reuse the implementation plan and maintain milestones, dependency commitments, remaining work, resource availability, risks, issues, and decisions.
4. Compare evidence with the baseline and tolerances. Investigate contradictions; missing evidence means unknown, not green. Surface forecast changes immediately when material; do not wait for a scheduled report.
5. Present feasible options when scope, capacity, cost, or dates conflict. Keep the baseline history; an authorized change is not permission to hide prior variance.
6. Close only on acceptance and explicit residual ownership. Distinguish project closure, release readiness, service operation, and later benefit realization.

Reference routing

Read only what the current task requires. Each reference includes applicability, procedures, failure signals, and an observable exit.

Situation	Read
New or inherited project, no PM, expert collaboration	Engagement and initiation
Choosing or questioning a methodology	Method selection
Predictive planning, stages, tolerances, fixed constraints	Predictive and stage governance
Scrum, iteration, incremental delivery, discovery uncertainty	Adaptive delivery
Flow, shared specialists, critical chain, appetite-based work	Flow and constrained capacity
Mixed methods, cross-team or vendor interfaces	Hybrid and dependencies
Estimates, forecasts, budgets, schedule model	Forecasting and schedule analysis
Weekly control, stakeholder disagreement, escalations	Control and communication
Scope changes, troubled projects, recovery	Change and recovery
Acceptance, cancellation, operational handoff	Closure and transition
Real examples or transferability checks	Case studies
Research provenance, edition, evidence limits	Source index
Skill purpose, coverage, research decisions	Research brief
Validation scope and behavioral evaluation protocol	Evaluation guide

Templates and calculation

Adapt existing project documents rather than creating parallel sources of truth. Use only artifacts that answer a current decision.

Need	Artifact
Establish mandate and working agreements	Project brief
Explain method choice and adaptation	Approach decision
Maintain milestones and evidence	Project control record
Coordinate a supplier or receiving team	Dependency agreement
Report a change and ask for a decision	Status and decision brief
Assess scope changes or recovery options	Change and recovery record
Accept, cancel, or transfer ownership	Closure record
Calculate a small dependency network	Example schedule

Run python3 scripts/schedule.py --input templates/schedule-example.json --json from this skill's directory when dependency arithmetic helps. Read forecasting first: the result is an unconstrained earliest schedule, not a commitment or a resource-leveled plan. The script only reads input and writes stdout/stderr. Run python3 -m unittest discover -s scripts -p 'test_*.py' for its tests.

When not to use

• A coding fix or architecture design: use the applicable engineering skill.
• Validating needs or choosing product investments: use product-discovery or product-roadmapping-and-portfolio.
• Only decomposing an approved requirement: use implementation-planning.
• Detailed board, WIP, or service-flow diagnosis: use kanban-guru.
• Shaping a bounded product bet: use product-shaping.
• Product-wide decision rights: use product-operations-and-governance.
• Executive-office support: use chief-of-staff-methodology.
• Release mechanics or launch approval: use release-engineering and production-readiness.
• Live incident command: use site-reliability-engineering.
• Ticket operations alone: use jira or linear. Use financial-modeling for financial model construction, and legal-strategy for contract interpretation.

Authority and completion

This methodology prepares decisions. It does not invent stakeholder consent, assign accepted commitments on someone else's behalf, or approve risk. Updating external project systems or sending communications changes external state:

Confirm the target, scope, and rollback path before acting. Read-only discovery may proceed without confirmation.

Apply existing session authorization; do not ask repeatedly for the same scope. Destructive actions need an explicit directive. Keep prepared drafts visibly distinct from issued communications. Do not monitor people or turn activity counts into individual performance judgments.

Complete a requested management cycle when the artifact or update is delivered, claims have evidence or explicit uncertainty, and unresolved decisions have an accountable route and next review trigger. Do not imply ongoing monitoring without an authorized mechanism. If three diagnostic passes yield no new evidence, stop with the missing input and affected decision; do not manufacture certainty.