vt-c-pd-analyze-changes

Analyze the impact of new information on the design workflow. Determines which artifacts are affected and recommends which phase to return to for iteration.

Plugin: core-standards
Category: Product Design Workflow
Command: /vt-c-pd-analyze-changes

---

Product Design: Analyze Changes

Analyze pending inbox items and determine their impact on the current design state.

Workflow Position

ITERATIVE DESIGN LOOP:

   New Input → /vt-c-pd-inbox-scan → [ /vt-c-pd-analyze-changes ] → /vt-c-pd-route-decision
                                      ▲ YOU ARE HERE

Invocation

/vt-c-pd-analyze-changes                  # Analyze all pending items
/vt-c-pd-analyze-changes --item FILE      # Analyze specific item

What This Skill Does

1. Loads pending items from .design-state.yaml
2. Reads and analyzes each item's content
3. Applies the impact matrix to determine affected artifacts
4. Aggregates impacts across multiple items
5. Generates impact report with routing recommendations

Execution Instructions

Step 0: Prerequisites

Ensure /vt-c-pd-inbox-scan has been run first:

# Check for pending items
Read: .design-state.yaml
# Look at inbox.pending_items where analyzed: false

If no pending items, report:

No pending items to analyze.
Run /vt-c-pd-inbox-scan first to detect new inputs.

Step 1: Load Pending Items

From .design-state.yaml:

inbox:
  pending_items:
    - file: "00-Inbox/usability-test-results.pdf"
      type: "usability_test"
      urgency: "HIGH"
      analyzed: false

Filter to items where analyzed: false

Step 2: For Each Item, Analyze Content

2a: Read Document

# For PDF files
Read: 00-Inbox/{filename}

# For Markdown files
Read: 00-Inbox/{filename}

# For other formats, extract what we can

2b: Extract Key Information

For each item, identify:

Field	Description
Summary	1-2 sentence description of content
Findings	Specific feedback points or discoveries
Severity	critical, major, minor
Affected Areas	personas, features, ui, flow, technical, scope

Severity Guidelines: - Critical: Blocks release, safety/compliance issue, fundamental flaw - Major: Significant usability problem, missing feature, major scope change - Minor: Polish item, minor confusion, nice-to-have suggestion

Affected Areas Keywords: - personas: user types, target audience, use cases - features: functionality, capabilities, requirements - ui: visual design, layout, components, styling - flow: user journey, navigation, steps, process - technical: performance, security, integration, data - scope: new features, removed features, timeline, priorities

Step 3: Apply Impact Matrix

Reference: references/impact-matrix.md

Change Type	PRD Impact	Prototype Impact	specs Impact	Return Phase
usability_test (critical)	None	HIGH	None	pd-3-prototype
usability_test (major)	None	MEDIUM	None	pd-3-prototype
usability_test (minor)	None	LOW	None	Continue pd-4
stakeholder_feedback (scope)	HIGH	HIGH	HIGH	pd-2-prd
stakeholder_feedback (ui)	LOW	HIGH	LOW	pd-3-prototype
stakeholder_feedback (flow)	MEDIUM	HIGH	MEDIUM	pd-3-prototype
user_research (invalidating)	HIGH	HIGH	HIGH	pd-1-research
user_research (supplementary)	MEDIUM	MEDIUM	LOW	pd-2-prd
tech_constraint (breaking)	HIGH	HIGH	HIGH	pd-2-prd
tech_constraint (limiting)	MEDIUM	MEDIUM	MEDIUM	pd-3-prototype
scope_change (addition)	HIGH	MEDIUM	HIGH	pd-2-prd
scope_change (removal)	HIGH	MEDIUM	HIGH	pd-2-prd
market_intel (critical)	MEDIUM	LOW	LOW	pd-1-research
market_intel (informational)	LOW	None	None	Continue
bug_report (prototype)	None	HIGH	None	pd-3-prototype
design_update	None	HIGH	None	pd-3-prototype

Step 4: Generate Item Analysis

For each pending item:

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Item {n}: {filename}
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Type: {type}
Severity: {CRITICAL | MAJOR | MINOR}
Summary: {1-2 sentence summary}

Findings:
• {finding 1}
• {finding 2}
• {finding 3}

Affected Areas: {personas | features | ui | flow | technical | scope}

Impact Assessment:
• PRD: {HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW | None} - {explanation}
• Prototype: {HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW | None} - {explanation}
• specs: {HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW | None} - {explanation}

Recommended Action: Return to {phase} | Continue current phase
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Step 5: Aggregate Multiple Impacts

When multiple items have different recommendations:

Aggregation Rules: 1. The earliest phase wins (pd-1 < pd-2 < pd-3 < pd-4 < continue) 2. Higher severity items take precedence 3. Scope changes always require PRD review

Example: - Item 1: Return to pd-3-prototype (UI fix) - Item 2: Return to pd-2-prd (scope change) - Aggregated: Return to pd-2-prd (earlier phase, will cascade to pd-3)

Step 6: Generate Impact Report

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Product Design: Impact Analysis Report
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Current State: {phase} (Iteration {n})
Items Analyzed: {count}

{For each item, include full analysis from Step 4}

AGGREGATED RECOMMENDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

{Based on aggregation:}

Options:

1. [RECOMMENDED] {Primary recommendation}
   - {Description of what this entails}
   - Affects: {artifacts}
   - Estimated scope: {Full iteration | Partial rework | Minor fixes}

2. {Alternative option if applicable}
   - {Description}
   - Trade-off: {what you give up}

3. {Another alternative}
   - {Description}
   - Trade-off: {what you give up}

4. Continue current phase
   - Defer items to backlog
   - Document as known limitations
   - Proceed to next phase

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NEXT STEP: /vt-c-pd-route-decision to select and execute option
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 7: Update State File

Mark items as analyzed:

inbox:
  pending_items:
    - file: "00-Inbox/{filename}"
      analyzed: true
      analysis:
        severity: "major"
        affected_areas: ["ui", "flow"]
        recommended_phase: "pd-3-prototype"

Severity Decision Tree

                    ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                    │   Analyze Item Content      │
                    └──────────────┬──────────────┘
                                   │
              ┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
              │                    │                    │
              ▼                    ▼                    ▼
    ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
    │ Safety/Legal/   │  │ Core Journey    │  │ Polish/Minor    │
    │ Compliance      │  │ Blocked         │  │ Friction        │
    │                 │  │                 │  │                 │
    │ = CRITICAL      │  │ = MAJOR         │  │ = MINOR         │
    └─────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘  └─────────────────┘

Phase Decision Tree

                    ┌─────────────────────────────┐
                    │   Determine Return Phase    │
                    └──────────────┬──────────────┘
                                   │
          ┌────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┐
          │                        │                        │
          ▼                        ▼                        ▼
┌───────────────────┐   ┌───────────────────┐   ┌───────────────────┐
│ Requirements/     │   │ UI/UX/Visual      │   │ Minor/Polish      │
│ Scope Changed?    │   │ Changes?          │   │ Items Only?       │
│                   │   │                   │   │                   │
│ → pd-2-prd        │   │ → pd-3-prototype  │   │ → Continue        │
└───────────────────┘   └───────────────────┘   └───────────────────┘
          │
          │ User research
          │ invalidated?
          │
          ▼
┌───────────────────┐
│ → pd-1-research   │
└───────────────────┘

Related Skills

• /vt-c-pd-inbox-scan - Detect new items (run first)
• /vt-c-pd-route-decision - Execute the routing decision
• references/impact-matrix.md - Full impact classification rules