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Skillsdesign-strategic-goals

design-strategic-goals

Design & creation

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Updated 10-16 06:50

About this skill

# Skill: Design Strategic Goals

Purpose

Define 3-5 long-term strategic goals, driving the project toward the vision and north star. Produce an outcome-focused goals document (not a task list or roadmap). Do not define mission, vision, north star, or milestones.

Core Objective

Primary objective: Generate a user-confirmed strategic goals document containing 3-5 outcome-focused goals aligned with the vision and north star, and adhere to the project's agreed path.

Success criteria(all requirements must be met):

  1. ✅ Record 3-5 goals: Exactly 3-5 strategic goals, each with a clear title and brief description.
  2. ✅ Outcome-focused: Each goal describes an outcome that can be judged as achieved or not, rather than a task list, feature list, or restatement of pillar directions.
  3. ✅ Aligned with the vision: Each goal supports the vision; the alignment is explicit or obvious.
  4. ✅ North star connection: At least one goal explicitly supports or moves the north star metric; optional: each goal briefly states "how this supports the vision/NSM".
  5. ✅ User confirmation: The user explicitly approves (e.g., "approved", "looks good", "continue", or equivalent).
  6. ✅ Document persistence: Write to the agreed path (default docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md or per project specification).
  7. ✅ Include an engineering health goal: Long-term projects (planning horizon > 6 months) must include an "engineering / governance health sustainability" type goal; short-term / experimental projects may be explicitly exempted with the rationale stated in the document. Basis: ADR 20260417-unified-value-driven-prioritization-model Decision 3.5.

Acceptance test: Can the reader see how each of the 3-5 goals advances the vision and north star without needing dates or phases (those belong to milestones)? In long-term projects, is there one goal that advocates for governance / engineering health?

Handoff point: When the goals are approved and adhered to, hand off to "Define Milestones" to break the goals down into phase checkpoints, or stop.

Scope Boundaries

This skill is responsible for：

  • Eliciting and recording 3-5 long-term strategic goals.
  • Ensuring alignment with the vision and north star (read from "define-vision"/"define-north-star" outputs or existing documents).
  • Adhering to the project's agreed path (default "docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md").
  • Optional: a note for each goal explaining how it supports the vision or north star.

This skill is not responsible for：

  • Defining the mission, vision, or north star (use "Define Mission", "Define Vision", "Define North Star").
  • Breaking goals down into phases or dates (use "Define Milestones").
  • Writing requirements, roadmaps, or backlogs (use "Analyze Requirements", "Project Planning", "Capture Work Items").

Usage Scenarios (Use Cases)

  • After the vision and north star: Set 3-5 strategic outcomes to advance the vision and drive the NSM.
  • Annual or quarterly strategy: Define or update strategic priorities.
  • When the backlog lacks goal alignment: Create clear goals so that the roadmap and backlog can trace them.
  • The fourth layer in the strategy chain: Follow the mission, vision, and North Star when building the complete hierarchy.

Behavior

Interaction policy

  • Default: The output path specified by the project (if it exists); otherwise "docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md". If available, read the vision and North Star from "docs/project-overview/".
  • Choose options: If the user has more than 5 candidate goals, provide priorities or cluster them into 3-5; ask the user to confirm the final set.
  • Confirmation: Before overwriting an existing strategic goals file; before finalizing.

Execution process

  1. Load the vision, North Star, and strategic pillars: Read docs/project-overview/vision.md、docs/project-overview/north-star.md and docs/project-overview/strategic-pillars.md(if present) or a user-provided summary.
  2. Reverse-decompose the North Star metric: Ask "For the North Star metric to grow, what must be true?" Each "must be true" is a candidate goal. Goals progress layer by layer from foundational capabilities to refinement.
  3. Goal draft: Focus on outcomes (e.g., "Reduce deployment time to under 5 minutes for 80% of teams"); not a task list or feature list.
  4. Engineering health goal check：
    • Ask about or determine the project planning horizon (> 6 months is considered a long-term project).
    • If it is a long-term project and the draft has no engineering / governance health goal → prompt the user whether to introduce the default template (see "Engineering Health Goal Template" below); the user can adjust the key results according to the actual project.
    • If a short-term / experimental project user chooses an exemption → record the "exemption rationale" at the end of the document.
  5. Check consistency: Each goal supports the vision; at least one clearly supports the North Star.
  6. Persist: Write to the path agreed by the project; if missing, create "docs/project-overview/". Optional: add "How this supports the vision/NSM" for each goal.

Engineering Health Goal Template (Default)

Long-term projects must include this type of goal (specific key results are adjusted by project):

## 目标 N: 工程与治理健康可持续

**描述**：确保项目的代码质量、文档一致性、治理机制持续演进，
支撑其他战略目标的长期可达成。

**关键结果**（示例，按项目调整）：
- 核心文档规范（ARTIFACT_NORMS）100% 合规
- ADR 覆盖率 ≥ 90%（所有架构决策有文档）
- 技术债 backlog 项数 ≤ X（按团队规模定）
- 治理健康矩阵通过率 ≥ 95%（plan-next 输出）
- 生产事故 MTTR ≤ Y 小时

This goalsupports the long-term achievability of all other strategic goals, and is not an independent product goal. Its existence ensures that foundational work such as governance / technical debt / documentation has a legitimate strategic place in value competition (based on ADR 1 decisions 3.4 and 3.5: capacity guardrails are allocated by strategic_goal).

Input & Output

Input：

  • Required: Vision; North Star (or the path to the vision/North Star document); project context.
  • Optional: Tasks; time range; existing goals or priorities.

Output：

  • Artifact: Strategic goals document.
  • Location：docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md(or per project specification).
  • Content: 3-5 strategic goals (title + short description); optional: links to the vision/NSM; for each goal, "How this supports the vision/NSM".
  • Lifecycle: Living (reviewed during the strategy cycle).

Constraints

Hard Boundaries

  • Do not define mission, vision, north star, or milestones in this skill.
  • Do not include dates or phases in the goals document (these belong to "Define Milestones").
  • The document must not contain fewer than 3 or more than 5 strategic goals.
  • Long-term projects (planning horizon > 6 months) must not completely omit engineering / governance health goals; if exempted, the rationale must be documented in the document.

Skill Boundaries (avoid overlap)

Do not do these (other skills can handle them)：

  • Mission: why we exist → usedefine-mission。
  • Vision: what kind of future we are building → use "Define Vision".
  • North Star: a single metric → use define-north-star。
  • Milestones: phase checkpoints → usedefine-里程碑。
  • Requirements or backlog: use "Analyze Requirements", "Capture Work Items", project planning.

When to stop and hand off：

  • The user says "approved" or equivalent → goals complete; offer handoff to "Define Milestones".
  • The user requests phases or milestones → hand off to "Define Milestones".

Self-Check

Core success criteria (all criteria must be met)

  • 3–5 goals recorded: exactly 3–5 strategic goals, with titles and descriptions.
  • Outcome-focused: each goal is an outcome or result, not a task list.
  • Aligned with the vision: each goal supports the vision.
  • North Star connection: at least one goal explicitly supports or moves the North Star.
  • Engineering health goal: long-term projects include an engineering / governance health goal; if exempted, the rationale is documented.
  • User confirmation: the user says "approved", "looks good", "continue", or similar.
  • Document persistence: write to the agreed path (default docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md or project specification).

Process quality check

  • Use vision/NSM: did I read or request the vision and North Star before drafting goals?
  • No dates/phases: did I avoid putting milestones or timelines into the goals document?
  • Goals are not restatements of pillars: each goal describes an outcome that can be judged as achieved or not, rather than an ongoing direction.
  • Goals can span pillars: one goal can involve multiple pillars; goals and pillars do not need to correspond one-to-one.
  • Progressive layering: goals have a clear hierarchical relationship from foundational capabilities to refinement.

Acceptance test

Can the reader understand how each goal advances the vision and North Star without needing dates or phases?

If no: the goals may be too tactical or lack alignment. Refine the outcomes and state alignment. If yes: the strategic goals are complete. Continue the handoff or stop.

Examples

Example 1: Complete hierarchy in place

Context: Vision and North Star exist. The user wants 3-5 strategic goals.

Process: Read the vision and North Star documents. Derive outcomes (e.g., "80% of teams deploy within 5 minutes", "zero manual steps for standard deployments", "complete audit trail for every deployment"). Draft 3-5 goals; explain how each supports the vision/NSM. The user confirms. Write to "docs/project-overview/strategic-goals.md".

Outcome: Goals persist; provide handoff to "Define milestones".

Example 2: The user proposes six goals

Context: The user listed six candidate goals; the plan allows only 3-5.

Process: Cluster or prioritize into 3-5 (e.g., merge two related goals, or drop the lowest priority). Present the 3-5 set with rationale; ask the user to confirm or adjust. Ensure each is outcome-focused and aligned with the vision/NSM. Once confirmed, stick to it.

Outcome: The document contains exactly 3-5 goals; the user has explicitly approved the set.

Example 3: A long-term project lacks an engineering health goal (edge case)

Background: The user drafted 4 strategic goals, all user/market-oriented; the project planning horizon is 12 months (long-term project).

Process：

  1. Detected that none of the 4 goals involve engineering/governance health.
  2. Prompt the user: "This is a long-term project. It is recommended to introduce an engineering health goal; otherwise, technical debt/governance work will have no strategic advocate in the long term, and capacity guardrails will have nowhere to be applied."
  3. Present the default template; the user adjusts key results (e.g., change "number of technical debt backlog items ≤ 20" to "≤ 30", based on team size).
  4. The user confirms inclusion as Goal 5.
  5. Persist 5 goals.

Outcome: The document contains 5 strategic goals, of which Goal 5 is "sustainable engineering and governance health". Capacity guardrails subsequently have a legitimate place when allocated by strategic_goal_id (see ADR 1 Decision 3.4).