💡 Production Readiness Graduation Gate Workflow

[github-actions[bot]]

Summary

A new meta-skill (runnable by any agent, like the existing Operations Review) that evaluates completed BGreat artifacts against maturity-appropriate quality bars and produces a structured Go/No-Go recommendation for production launch. Unlike the Ops Review skill (which checks internal consistency and coverage), this skill assesses whether the decisions in completed plans are sufficient for the stated maturity level, compares against industry baselines, and produces a production launch approval document with conditions and risk acceptance items.

Market Signal

Google's Production Readiness Review (PRR) process is widely cited as a best practice for production launches. 73% of platform teams now ship structured launch gates, but most are ad-hoc checklists rather than assessment workflows that evaluate decision quality against maturity targets. The gap between adoption (80% of large orgs have platform teams per Gartner) and measurable productivity gains (fewer than 30%) suggests that planning without quality assessment produces plans that don't drive results.

User Signal

The BGreat Suite production readiness checklist template (bgr-production-readiness-checklist-template.md) is a status tracker — checkboxes marking which workflows are complete. The Ops Review skill (bgr-ops-review) is a linter — checking consistency, coverage gaps, and staleness across artifacts. Neither produces a judgment about whether the plans are good enough. Teams completing all 8+ workflows still lack a structured answer to: "Are these plans good enough to go to production at our maturity level?" This is the natural capstone of the BGreat Suite workflow sequence — the artifact that bridges planning and execution.

Technical Opportunity

Architecturally, this is a skill (like bgr-ops-review) rather than a multi-step workflow, since it assesses existing artifacts rather than creating new ones through guided discovery. It reads the bgr_maturity configuration value to calibrate expectations — a greenfield plan is evaluated differently than an advanced plan. It builds on the ops review's discovery logic (scan {bgr_artifacts}/) but adds maturity-specific evaluation criteria per workflow domain. It produces a graduation-gate-report.md in bgr_artifacts.

Assessment

Dimension	Score	Rationale
Feasibility	high	Builds on existing ops review discovery pattern; maturity-calibrated evaluation criteria are well-documented in industry literature (Google PRR, CNCF maturity model)
Impact	high	Answers the fundamental question "are we production ready?" with structured rigor; natural capstone for the entire BGreat Suite experience
Urgency	med	Valuable once teams complete workflows; urgency grows as suite adoption increases; no external regulatory driver

Adversarial Review

Strongest objection: The Ops Review already checks consistency, coverage gaps, and staleness. Adding another meta-review creates confusion about which review to run and when.

Rebuttal: The Ops Review answers: "Do our plans agree with each other and are they filled in?" The Graduation Gate answers: "Are our plans good enough for production at our maturity level?" These are fundamentally different questions. Example: the Ops Review would PASS a cost optimization plan that consistently references the infrastructure plan and has no empty sections. The Graduation Gate would FLAG that same plan if it targets "established" maturity but lacks reserved instance strategy, anomaly detection, or budget alerts — because those are prerequisites for that maturity level per industry baselines. Different questions, complementary outputs, clear usage guidance: Ops Review during planning (iterative consistency checks), Graduation Gate before launch (readiness judgment).

Suggested Next Step

Draft skill skeleton (SKILL.md + templates/graduation-gate-report.md) covering: maturity-calibrated evaluation criteria per workflow domain (greenfield → advanced expectations), industry baseline comparison, risk acceptance register, conditional approval with remediation items, and Go/No-Go recommendation with confidence level. Add to module-help.csv with menu code GG (Graduation Gate) alongside the existing OR (Operations Review).