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.

Choose the entry point

Starting condition	First action	Primary output
New or inherited project with unclear mandate	Read Engagement and initiation	Proposed brief with authority and evidence gaps
Approved work with a delivery method but weak control	Read Control and communication	Current control record and decision brief
Slipping date, cost, scope, or dependency	Read Forecasting and schedule analysis and Change and recovery	Conditional forecast and recovery options
Cross-team, supplier, or mixed-method handoff	Read Hybrid and dependencies	Dependency agreement and acceptance evidence
Delivered work, retirement, or decommissioning with unresolved ownership or benefits	Read Closure and transition	Conditional closure, accepted transition, or decommissioning record
Technical uncertainty needs staged learning	Read Adaptive delivery	Evidence-backed decision among PoC, prototype, pilot, or stop; none alone proves production readiness
Forecast, deadline, or resource-feasibility question	Read Forecasting and schedule analysis	Conditional forecast stating model, assumptions, capacity, and feasibility limits
Material risk, issue, assumption, or decision needs control	Read Control and communication	Record with owner, signal/trigger, response, authority, and next review
A supplier or team handoff lacks readiness or acceptance evidence	Read Hybrid and dependencies	Agreement with provider, receiver, definition of ready, evidence, fallback, and escalation

Do not call a desired date a commitment, a forecast an acceptance, or a diagnostic brief an approved plan.

Before proposing a commitment, identify who can authorize scope, dates, capacity, acceptance, and external communication. Mark each as accepted, proposed, unknown, or disputed. Read-only diagnosis may proceed; external updates require authorization.

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.

A multi-project initiative with a shared outcome, cross-project dependencies, or program-level benefits belongs to technical-program-management; a single bounded project remains here.

Decision phase / situation	Read	Exit artifact or evidence
New or inherited project, no PM, expert collaboration	Engagement and initiation	Proposed brief with mandate, authority, and evidence gaps
Choosing or questioning a methodology	Method selection	Approach decision with adaptations and revisit trigger
Predictive planning, stages, tolerances, fixed constraints	Predictive and stage governance	Baseline, tolerances, and gate evidence
Scrum, iteration, incremental delivery, discovery uncertainty	Adaptive delivery	Learning/increment evidence and inspect/adapt decision
Flow, shared specialists, critical chain, appetite-based work	Flow and constrained capacity	Capacity/WIP or appetite decision with owner
Mixed methods, cross-team or vendor interfaces	Hybrid and dependencies	Dependency agreement and interface acceptance evidence
Estimates, forecasts, budgets, schedule model	Forecasting and schedule analysis	Conditional forecast with assumptions and feasibility limits
Weekly control, stakeholder disagreement, escalations	Control and communication	Status/update or decision brief with next checkpoint
Scope changes, troubled projects, recovery	Change and recovery	Change/recovery record preserving the baseline
Acceptance, cancellation, operational handoff	Closure and transition	Closure or transition record with residual owners
Real examples or transferability checks	Case studies	Source-limited analogy, not a guarantee
Research provenance, edition, evidence limits	Source index	Traceable evidence ledger
Skill purpose, coverage, research decisions	Research brief	Coverage and limitation record
Validation scope and behavioral evaluation protocol	Evaluation guide	Reproducible evaluation record

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. This skill may track project implications after that decision, but does not approve the release.
• 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.