success-plan-authoring

name	success-plan-authoring
description	Author a 30/60/90 day or quarterly success plan for an EdTech partner that has measurable success criteria, named owners, and a defensible cadence. Reach for this skill when onboarding a new partner OR when refreshing a quarterly plan after a renewal / midyear review.

Skill: Success Plan Authoring

A success plan that says "the partner will be happier" doesn't survive contact with reality. This skill produces a success plan that the partner and the PSM both consult, that has measurable success criteria, and that catches its own failure modes early.

Step 1 — Anchor on the partner's stated goals (in their words)

Pull from the partner profile (curated by partner-profile-curator). Use the partner's verbatim language. If the profile doesn't have the partner's stated goals yet, stop and capture them first — a success plan against goals you assumed is worse than no plan.

Examples of partner-stated goals (verbatim, attributed):

• "We want our teachers to spend less time grading and more on small-group instruction" — Jane Smith, Curriculum Director, 2026-03-12
• "Our biggest risk is staff turnover; whatever we adopt has to survive next year's classroom changes" — Mike Lee, Superintendent, 2026-02-04

Step 2 — Translate goals to measurable outcomes (this is the hard part)

For each partner-stated goal, name one observable outcome that would prove the goal was met. The outcome must be:

• Measurable — a number, a rate, a count, a categorical fact (not "a feeling")
• Attributable — the partner and the PSM both agree the product moved this outcome (or at least contributed materially)
• Time-boxed — observed by date X
• Defensible — the source query / measurement method is documented; the partner could audit it

Example translation:

• Goal: "teachers spend less time grading"
• Outcome: median teacher self-reported grading time drops from baseline X (measured pre-launch) to Y by end-of-quarter, per the monthly teacher survey (instrumented in the LMS)

Anti-pattern: outcomes that are easy to measure but don't actually answer the goal. "Logins are up" doesn't prove teachers spend less time grading.

Step 3 — Sequence into 30 / 60 / 90 (or quarterly milestones)

A 30/60/90 is not "do everything in the first 30 days." Sequence by dependency:

• 30 days — onboarding complete; baseline measurements captured; named champion engaged; first small win identified
• 60 days — adoption depth crosses an instrumented threshold; mid-cycle check-in completed; rostering / SIS / LMS data quality validated; first measurable outcome trend visible
• 90 days — first measurable outcome assessed against target; refresh decision (continue / adjust / escalate); QBR ready

Each milestone has:

• A specific measurable check (the same kind as in Step 2)
• A named owner on our side and on the partner's side
• A date (not "during week 6"; an actual date)

Step 4 — Cadence

How often is the PSM in touch, in what channel, with what content? Defaults vary by segment:

• K-12 (district / school): every 2 weeks during the school year; pause / async during summer; high-frequency during fall start-of-year (first 4 weeks); QBR cadence aligned to academic quarters, not calendar quarters
• Higher-ed (institution / department): every 3 weeks during the academic term; reduced during break and finals; QBR aligned to the institution's academic + fiscal calendar (which are often different)
• Corporate L&D: every 2 weeks during active cohort; reduced between cohorts; QBR aligned to the partner's fiscal quarter

Cadence is segment-aware in the plan, not assumed.

Step 5 — Risks and red-flag triggers (the part most plans skip)

For each milestone, name the 2 things most likely to go wrong. Examples:

• 30-day risk: rostering data hasn't synced cleanly → milestone slips into 60-day window
• 60-day risk: named champion leaves the role → recovery play fires; refresh the champion-redundancy section of the profile
• 90-day risk: measured outcome misses target → refresh decision: was the target wrong, the cadence wrong, or the product wrong? Different answer drives different action.

These risks should be trigger-mapped to recovery plays (success-playbook-designer owns the play library).

Step 6 — Document the decision rules

A success plan has decision points. Make them explicit:

• "If outcome X is below target by 20% at 60 days, escalate to leadership for a refresh conversation"
• "If champion engagement drops below 1 meaningful touchpoint per month for 2 consecutive months, fire the recovery play"
• "If rostering data quality issues persist past 30 days, escalate to product"

A success plan without decision rules is a wish list.

Step 7 — Get partner sign-off in writing

The plan exists only when the partner agrees with it in writing. A verbal "sounds good" is a churn vector at the next leadership change. Capture:

• Partner-side signer (named role, named person)
• Date of agreement
• The specific measurable outcomes agreed to (so a successor on either side can't claim "that's not what we agreed")
• Refresh cadence (quarterly is the default)

What this skill does NOT cover

• Health-score design (route to partner-health-scoring)
• QBR composition (route to qbr-composition)
• Play design when a risk fires (route to success-playbook-designer)
• Comms variants of the plan for partner-side audiences (route to ferpa-comms-translator)
• Generic project-plan templating (route to ravenclaude-core/project-manager)