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How We Work

We operate as a dual-track product team: discovery runs in parallel with delivery. The PM and designer continuously validate problems and solutions while engineers build validated work in two-week sprints.

New to the team? Start here.

  1. Sprint Anatomy — A visual walk-through of one complete sprint cycle, showing both tracks side by side
  2. Sprint Cadence — The delivery track in detail: ceremonies, cadence, roles, and expectations
  3. Ceremony Playbook — Step-by-step guides for running each ceremony, with agendas, prep checklists, and reminder templates
  4. Discovery Overview — Why we do discovery and how the two tracks connect
  5. Discovery Playbook — The detailed how-to for PM and design discovery work

The Two Tracks

Discovery Track                          Delivery Track
(PM, Design, Stakeholders)               (Devs, PM, Scrum Master)

  Problems & Opportunities                 Sprint Backlog
         |                                       |
  Stakeholder Research                     Development
         |                                       |
  Problem Framing                          Code Review & QA
         |                                       |
  Solution Exploration                     Deployment
         |                                       |
  Prototyping & Validation                 Release
         |
  Validated Backlog Items ----------> Backlog Grooming (Thursday)

Discovery feeds delivery. Delivery surfaces insights that feed discovery. They run in parallel, not in sequence. The two tracks converge at Thursday backlog grooming, where validated opportunities become dev-ready stories.

Core Principles

  • Outcomes over output. Success is not "we shipped the feature." Success is "students are discovering pathways they wouldn't have found on their own."
  • Consolidate ceremonies to protect maker time. All ceremonies on one Tuesday every two weeks. No-meeting Wednesdays, every week.
  • Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Validate before you build. Cheap experiments beat expensive builds.
  • Engineers are partners, not order-takers. If you don't understand why something is being built, ask. If you disagree with the approach, say so.
  • Deploy continuously, release intentionally. Deployments happen when code is ready. Releases are communication events.

Quick Reference

What When Who Details
Sprint starts Wednesday All Heads down, no meetings
Standups Daily except Wed All 12:30 PM ET / 9:30 AM PT
Mid-sprint check Tuesday, Week 2 All 30-min health check
Backlog grooming Thursday, Week 2 All PM presents, devs t-shirt size
Code cutoff Friday COB, Week 2 Devs PRs submitted, no new code
Sprint close Monday COB Devs Reviews, QA, deploy
Sprint review Tuesday 12:30 PM ET / 9:30 AM PT All + stakeholders Demo completed work
Retrospective Tuesday 1:15 PM ET / 10:15 AM PT Internal team only Process improvement
Sprint planning Tuesday 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT Dev team + PM Final estimation, commit
Release Wednesday mid-morning PM Stakeholder comms

Visualizations