Overview

Goal

Produce a compact product brief for a small feature -- an auto-reminder SMS sent before an upcoming shift on Kestrel, the fictional shift-scheduling SaaS this topic has followed throughout -- that assembles a validated problem statement (with a job story), an MVP scope with explicit non-goals, a RICE-prioritized backlog, a north-star plus supporting metrics, and an A/B experiment design into one decision artifact an engineer could act on directly. This is a leadership ‡ design/decision capstone: no code, zero runnable files. Every mechanism combined here was already taught, individually, somewhere in the Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced scenarios of this topic; this capstone is where they run together on one new feature, at a larger and more realistic scale than any single worked scenario.

The feature traces directly back to Worked Scenario 19's opportunity-solution tree: "employees forget upcoming shifts" was the first of three named opportunities under the "reduce no-show shift incidents by 30%" outcome, and this capstone is where that opportunity's solution -- SMS reminders -- gets fully specified as a product brief, rather than the one-line sketch the tree gave it.

%% Color Palette: Blue #0173B2, Orange #DE8F05, Teal #029E73, Purple #CC78BC, Brown #CA9161
flowchart LR
    A["Problem + JTBD<br/>evidence"]:::blue
    B["MVP scope<br/>+ explicit non-goals"]:::orange
    C["RICE-ranked<br/>backlog"]:::teal
    D["North-star + metrics<br/>+ A#47;B experiment"]:::purple
    E["One internally<br/>consistent brief.md"]:::brown
    A --> B --> C --> D --> E
 
    classDef blue fill:#0173B2,stroke:#000000,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
    classDef orange fill:#DE8F05,stroke:#000000,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
    classDef teal fill:#029E73,stroke:#000000,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
    classDef purple fill:#CC78BC,stroke:#000000,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px
    classDef brown fill:#CA9161,stroke:#000000,color:#FFFFFF,stroke-width:2px

Diagram: the capstone's build order -- frame the problem, scope the MVP, rank the backlog, define success, and design the experiment, all landing in one cohesive brief.md.

Concepts exercised

• problem vs solution framing via JTBD (co-02, co-03)
• MVP scope + explicit non-goals (co-12)
• RICE prioritization with a defended ordering (co-07)
• north-star + AARRR funnel metrics (co-17, co-18)
• an A/B experiment with hypothesis, primary metric, and guardrail (co-15)

The full brief lives in learning/capstone/brief.md -- one cohesive document, not several separate files. Nothing on this page repeats brief.md's content; this page narrates the build order and cites the concepts each step exercises.

Step 1: Problem statement, JTBD, and evidence

exercises co-02, co-03

brief.md opens with a problem statement that names the user (employees on a Kestrel-scheduled team), the circumstance (a shift days out, easy to lose track of in a busy week), and the desired outcome (fewer forgotten, missed shifts) -- withholding any specific solution (co-02). A job story follows, naming the circumstance, the motivation, and the expected progress (co-03), backed by evidence tracing to Worked Scenario 19's opportunity-solution tree.

Verify: the problem statement states the user's problem, not a pre-chosen solution -- reading the problem-statement and JTBD sections alone, before the MVP scope appears, gives no indication that the eventual answer will be an SMS reminder specifically.

Step 2: MVP scope, non-goals, and RICE-ranked backlog

exercises co-12, co-07

brief.md continues with an MVP scope naming exactly what ships (fixed-timing SMS reminders) and an explicit non-goals list (no per-shift customization, no email channel, no reminders past a 7-day window) that keeps the MVP from silently growing (co-12). A three-item RICE-scored backlog then ranks the reminder work, with each score's Reach/Impact/Confidence/Effort stated and the resulting order defended (co-07).

Verify: every RICE score in the backlog is justified with stated units, and the backlog's order follows the computed scores exactly -- the same standard Worked Scenarios 6 and 11 already demonstrated, applied here to a new backlog.

Step 3: Metrics and A/B experiment design

exercises co-17, co-18, co-15

brief.md closes with a metrics section naming Kestrel's north-star (teams with an active published schedule in the last 7 days) and this feature's specific supporting metric (no-show rate), mapped to the Retention stage of the AARRR funnel (co-17, co-18) -- and an A/B experiment design naming exactly one hypothesis, one primary (OEC) metric, and a guardrail against notification fatigue (co-15).

Verify: the experiment names exactly one hypothesis, exactly one primary metric, and at least one guardrail distinct from the primary -- the same standard Worked Scenario 20 already demonstrated, applied here to the reminder feature.

Acceptance criteria

• The brief is internally consistent: the MVP scope (Step 2) serves the problem stated in Step 1 (fixed-timing SMS reminders directly address "forgets an upcoming shift," nothing more), the metrics (Step 3) measure the outcome named in Step 1 (a lower no-show rate is the direct, measurable version of "fewer forgotten shifts"), and the experiment (Step 3) tests the hypothesis the MVP scope implies (reminders reduce no-shows without a hidden opt-out cost).
• The RICE-ranked backlog's order is defended, not merely asserted -- every score traces to stated Reach/Impact/Confidence/Effort values.
• The A/B experiment names exactly one hypothesis, one primary (OEC) metric, and at least one guardrail metric distinct from the primary.
• The brief is executable without hand-waving: a reader could hand brief.md to a real product trio and they would know exactly what to build, why, in what order, and how to know whether it worked.

Done bar

This capstone produces the stated artifact: a complete, internally consistent product brief for Kestrel's auto-reminder SMS feature, combining every mechanism this topic taught -- problem-before- solution framing and JTBD (co-02, co-03), MVP scoping with explicit non-goals (co-12), RICE prioritization with a defended ordering (co-07), north-star and AARRR-mapped metrics (co-17, co-18), and a properly guarded A/B experiment (co-15) -- into one document, exactly as Worked Scenario 30 already demonstrated at a smaller scale for the shift-swap-approval feature. Every technique used here traces to a primary source already cited in this topic's Accuracy notes and 2026-07-18 re-verification pass (Christensen's Jobs-to-be-Done framing; Sean McBride's RICE formula, Intercom, 2018; Sean Ellis's north-star concept as systematized by Amplitude; Dave McClure's AARRR funnel, 2007; Kohavi, Tang & Xu's guardrail-metric standard, 2020); no new fact was needed to write this page or brief.md.

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