| name | what-so-what-now-what |
| description | Use this skill to structure a message as What / So What / Now What — state the fact, explain the impact, recommend the action. Best for post-mortems, retros, incident reviews, status updates, debriefs, and any "here's what happened and what we should do" moment. Triggers on "what so what now what", "structure this post-mortem / retro / incident review / status update", "help me debrief <X>", "what's the takeaway and action", or "run this post-mortem cleanly". Turns raw observations into a crisp fact → impact → action arc.
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| version | 1.0.0 |
| user-invocable | true |
What / So What / Now What — Fact, Impact, Action
The Borton/Rolfe reflective model. Three questions, asked in order, turn a pile of observations
into a decision. It keeps debriefs from drifting into blame or rambling: separate what happened
from what it means from what we do next, and each stays clean.
WHAT → SO WHAT → NOW WHAT
the fact the impact the action
(observe) (interpret) (decide)
neutral, specific why it matters concrete next step
The Three Moves
- What — the fact. What happened, observed neutrally and specifically. Data, events, the
observable record. No interpretation and no blame yet — just the ground truth everyone can
agree on.
- So What — the impact. Why it matters. The consequences, the meaning, the significance. What
did this cost / risk / reveal? This is the analysis layer — connect the fact to something the
audience cares about.
- Now What — the action. The concrete recommendation or next step. Specific, owned, and
time-bound where possible. This is the payoff; a debrief without a "Now What" is just a
complaint.
When to use it (and when not)
Use it for: post-mortems and incident reviews, sprint retros, project debriefs, status updates,
research/experiment readouts, performance conversations, "lessons learned" write-ups.
Reach for something else when: you're pitching or selling (→ storybrand, abt), inspiring on
vision (→ golden-circle), or presenting a decision to a board (→ pyramid-principle, which leads
with the recommendation rather than building to it). This frame is for reflection that produces
action.
How to build it
- Separate the layers ruthlessly. Keep opinion out of "What" and keep facts from re-litigating
in "Now What". Mixing them is what makes debriefs go sideways.
- Make "What" blameless and specific. "The deploy at 14:02 dropped the checkout service for 18
minutes," not "someone broke prod."
- Make "So What" quantify impact where you can — cost, users affected, risk, what it exposed.
- Make "Now What" an owned action, not a vague intention. "X will add a deploy check by Friday,"
not "we should be more careful."
- Repeat the trio per finding for a multi-point review; keep each self-contained.
Worked example
Raw material: a checkout outage after a deploy, caused by an untested config change.
As What / So What / Now What:
What: At 14:02 a config change was deployed that pointed checkout at the wrong payment
endpoint. Checkout returned errors for 18 minutes until we rolled back.
So What: ~1,200 customers hit a failed checkout; we estimate ~$14k in abandoned carts and a
spike in support tickets. It also revealed that config changes bypass our staging tests entirely.
Now What: (1) Priya adds config changes to the staging test gate by Friday. (2) We add a
checkout smoke test to the deploy pipeline this sprint. (3) Rollback runbook gets linked in the
deploy channel today.
Facts everyone accepts, an impact that's quantified, and actions with owners — no blame, all signal.
Quality bar / common mistakes
- Interpretation smuggled into "What". If a reader could disagree with your "What", it's not a
fact yet — move the opinion to "So What".
- Stopping at "So What". Analysis with no action is the most common failure. Always land the
"Now What".
- Vague "Now What". "We should improve testing" isn't an action. Name who, what, and by when.
- Blame instead of system. Good debriefs fix the system, not the person. Keep "What" neutral.
Compose
- Have the
story-drafter agent draft in this framework (the storytelling skill uses it for
parallel comparison).
- Audit an existing draft with the
story-critic agent, targeting what-so-what-now-what.
- Not sure this is the right frame? Start from the
storytelling skill and let it recommend.
