// week 03 · day 13 · wed

Codify How the Team Operates.

$/alignment-memo · ~20 min
// 01 · what it does

Principles over re-litigation.

alignment-memo drafts internal alignment artifacts: operating memos, standards, frameworks, and program proposals. It structures rough notes or a description of a recurring tension into a memo with an executive summary, problem-first context, principles grounded in specific behaviors rather than abstract values, core content adapted to the artifact subtype, application guidance (who does what differently because of this memo), and a calibrated ask (approval, adoption, alignment, or awareness — not all memos ask for the same thing).

The artifacts alignment-memo produces are the ones that make a team opinionated about how it operates, not just what it builds. Without them, the same trade-off gets re-debated every sprint. With them, the PM can point to an existing record of the principle and move on. The distinction between ask types matters: asking for adoption means asking people to change their behavior — that's different from asking for awareness, and the memo has to be written accordingly.

Day 13 follows the decision log because once the Instant Book decision is structured, the operating principle behind it needs to be codified before the leadership meeting. The pending decision isn't just about one feature — it's about how Terrain navigates features that benefit one side of the marketplace at a cost to the other. That's the pattern worth preserving in writing.

// 02 · sample prompts

Two ways in.

prompt.basic.txt 
/alignment-memo

We keep having the same debate every sprint about whether to prioritize platform stability work or new feature work. It's slowing us down. Help me write an operating memo that settles how we make this call so we don't have to relitigate it every planning meeting.
prompt.advanced.txt 
/alignment-memo

Draft an operating memo for how the Adventurer Experience and Guide Experience squads evaluate features that create a trade-off between one side of the Terrain marketplace and the other.

Context: This tension comes up repeatedly. The most recent example is Instant Book: it improves adventurer detail-to-booking conversion by about 32% but creates guide calendar risk and potential no-shows. The final mandate-vs-flexible-mode decision is still pending, and the debate has already taken three weeks and escalated to Dana Park. We need a working agreement so future trade-offs can be evaluated faster and more consistently.

The memo should establish:
- How we frame guide/adventurer trade-offs when evaluating a feature (not a formula — a shared vocabulary and set of questions)
- What evidence threshold is required before a trade-off decision can be made at the PM level vs. escalated to Dana
- How the two squads (Adventurer Experience and Guide Experience) coordinate on features that touch both sides
- What "good enough" looks like for a decision that helps one side at a cost to the other

Audience: Jordan Lee (Guide Experience PM) and me (Adventurer Experience PM), plus Dana Park as the approving authority on the escalation threshold.
Ask: adoption — this is a working agreement between the two PM squads, not a company policy. Dana needs to agree on the escalation threshold section only.
Include 2–3 concrete application examples from current work (Instant Book, guide activation, cancellation policy).
// 03 · reflection

Three questions.

  1. 01Which principle did the skill articulate that you hadn't explicitly named before — and would your team actually adopt it, or is it aspirational?
  2. 02What's the scenario where this memo fails — the specific situation where the principles don't resolve the tension?
  3. 03What did the skill get wrong about the "ask" — and why does that matter for whether this memo actually changes behavior?
← Day 12 Day 14 →