Cohort Session 8 Practice and Roles

Session 8 · Practice and roles

What does each person in the room do on Monday?

Part of the Cohort Kit. Ninety minutes. The last session turns seven weeks of method into one week of work: by the end every attendee has walked their own role's steps, the room has agreed who owns which artefact, and the candidate project has a first-cycle plan with a rhythm.

Pre-reading (about 30 minutes; each attendee reads their own role, then the two shared lessons)

• Your role: product managers · program managers · solution architects · engineers · forward-deployed engineers · QA · DevOps and platform · business sponsors · executives
• The SkyWays case study — the ninety days the workbench plays, as prose
• The operating rhythm — daily, weekly, quarterly: what the cadence adds to the loops
• Optional, for anyone interviewing or hiring: Six answer frameworks and the question banks in the Interviews and careers track

Bring. Everything the cohort has produced: the AI-fit verdict, the bar, the spec, the bolt plan, the review policy, the golden-set plan, the gate map and the two-number report. Seven artefacts, however rough. And the "how we deliver" page from session 4.

You will leave with. A first-cycle plan for the candidate with an owner per artefact, the team's cadence written down, and a date for the first gate.

Run-sheet

Minutes	Block	Do this	Material
0–10	Recap	Around the room: your role's step you are least sure how to do. Not answered yet; written on the board	—
10–35	The idea	The Day 90 episode: both numbers in front of the steering committee, which is where every artefact the cohort made ends up. Then the workbench's process page, one role at a time, with the attendee of that role saying which step they already do and which is new	Day 90 · the steering committee · What each role does anyway, done better
35–65	Exercise	Each attendee walks their own role page on the site, step by step, against the seven artefacts on the table, and marks which step produced each and which step has nothing yet. Pairs across roles then trade: the architect reads the QA lead's gaps and vice versa. Finish with F1 to F5, asked round the room as an interview would, one minute each	The role pages: PM · SA · Engineering · QA · DevOps · Leadership · F1–F5
65–80	Decision	The room writes the first-cycle plan: each artefact with an owner by name, the cadence from the rhythm lesson (what happens daily, weekly, at the end of the cycle), and the date of the first gate with who chairs it. The board's answers from the recap get an owner each	The operating rhythm · Who signs · the team's "how we deliver" page
80–90	Close	One sentence each: what will you do differently on Monday? Then the facilitator names the field note	—

Facilitator notes

• Ownership is by name. "Product owns the bar" is a role sentence and evaporates. "Priya owns the bar and its golden set" survives the week. Insist on names for all seven artefacts.
• The cross-role trade is the best fifteen minutes of the cohort. People discover that the artefact they were waiting for is one they were supposed to produce. Let that run long if it is running.
• The interview questions are not a test. F1 to F5 round the room shows everyone that they can now answer "how accurate does it need to be?" with arithmetic. That is the cohort's proof of its own bar.
• If the team is about to start the real project, the first gate date is the cohort's last artefact. Put it in a calendar before the room empties.
• Ten-minute version: the process page role by role, then the first-cycle plan with names.

Homework

A field note, by the facilitator, within a week: what landed, what did not, what was cut, and what the sessions should say differently. The kit is designed and not yet field-tested, and the note is how it gets better. Attendees: the first gate, on the date agreed.

After the cohort

The team has the P0 and P1 evidence pack for its own project, which is the point. The course companion is where a team that will also build goes next, with the labs as checkpoints; the study plans fit the same material to a calendar for an individual. Back to Session 7 · the Cohort Kit.