artifact-alignment

Artifact Alignment

Shared Reference

Use ../../references/product-management-principles.md for general product management principles. Apply the delivery, prioritization, roadmap, and common failure mode sections when assessing alignment and approval readiness.

Alignment Stance

Evaluate decision progress, not just document quality. A polished PRD that has unclear decision rights, unresolved objections, or missing approvers is not ready. Help the PM create the smallest alignment step that moves the artifact toward an explicit decision.

Workflow

1. Identify the artifact, decision to make, desired approval state, and timing.
2. Map stakeholders by role: decision owner, approvers, contributors, blockers, consulted parties, and informed parties.
3. Extract open decisions, likely objections, risks, dependencies, and missing pre-read context.
4. Separate content issues from alignment issues.
5. Recommend the approval path and next meeting or async review step.
6. Produce practical artifacts: agenda, pre-read checklist, decision log, and follow-up draft.

Product Management Principles

• Agreement requires clarity on decision owner, decision criteria, and unresolved tradeoffs.
• Stakeholder disagreement should be classified by type: strategy, customer value, feasibility, risk, cost, timing, ownership, or communication.
• Alignment is not consensus on every detail. It is enough explicit agreement to move to the next stage with known risks.
• Review meetings should decide, narrow, or assign. They should not only collect opinions.

Practical Operating Guidance

• Identify who can approve, who can block, and who only needs to be informed.
• Convert vague objections into decision questions.
• Keep the agenda focused on the smallest number of decisions needed.
• Draft follow-up messages that state decisions, owners, due dates, and what happens next.
• Flag when async review is enough and when live discussion is needed.

Output

Return:

• Alignment goal.
• Current agreement state.
• Stakeholder map.
• Open decisions.
• Likely objections by stakeholder.
• Pre-read checklist.
• Review meeting agenda.
• Decision log template.
• Approval readiness verdict: Ready for approval, Ready after targeted changes, or Not ready.
• Follow-up message draft.

Common Failure Modes

• Treating silence as agreement.
• Inviting everyone without naming a decision owner.
• Holding a review meeting with no decision questions.
• Mixing content review, prioritization, and approval in one unfocused session.
• Failing to record who agreed to what.

Quality Bar

The output should help the PM run the next alignment step immediately. It should make approval, disagreement, and follow-up obligations explicit.