/upfront:increment

What it does

/upfront:increment runs a structured retro after an increment ships. It forces reflection on what happened — what worked and why, what surprised you, whether the architecture still holds — before deciding what comes next. It’s the steering wheel between increments.

When to use it

• After shipping an increment defined by /upfront:vision
• Between major phases of work when you need to reflect before continuing
• When you want to check key assumptions and kill criteria against reality
• Works with or without a vision file — brownfield projects and tactical work benefit too

How it works

1. What shipped — summarizes delivered work from git history and completed specs
2. What worked and WHY — rejects surface answers like “it went well.” Forces the causal chain: why did it work?
3. Lessons learned — probes for estimation misses, assumption failures, process friction, and technical surprises
4. Architecture check — verifies specs/ARCHITECTURE.md still matches reality and flags accumulated debt
5. What to adjust — checks key assumptions (confirmed or busted), evaluates kill criteria honestly, and identifies scope or priority shifts
6. Next increment — proposes the next increment based on what was learned, not just what was originally planned

Key principles

• “It went well” is not a retro — push for why something worked, not just that it worked
• Kill criteria are checked honestly — if the evidence says stop, it says stop
• The vision serves the user — if reality doesn’t match the vision, update the vision
• Retros are not optional — 2 minutes of reflection prevents the next increment from repeating mistakes

Output

• Updated vision file — completed increment marked SHIPPED with retro summary, assumptions updated, future increments adjusted
• Updated specs/LEARNINGS.md — transferable insights, surprises, architecture changes, and process notes
• Proposed next increment with value delivery, assumption testing, and learning goals

Next step

When ready to start the next increment, run /upfront:feature for the first feature.