AI Skills system for product delivery
AdoptedA library of AI skills that automates the repetitive core of the PO workflow — drafting user stories, acceptance criteria, and backlog tags to a consistent house standard.
- Applied AI
- Workflow automation
- Backlog refinement
- Skill design
- Azure DevOps
Problem
Backlog refinement is high-volume, repetitive, and quality-variable. Writing well-formed user stories, Given/When/Then acceptance criteria, and consistent tags by hand is slow — and the standard drifts across the team and over time.
Approach
I designed a set of composable AI skills, each encoding the team's actual house formats for user story, acceptance criteria, and definition-of-done as instructions rather than generic prompts. They turn a short scope description into a structured work item: correctly titled and prefixed, acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then, persona-checked, and tagged for the board. Templated per work-item type, so the same scope yields a consistent work item every time — with the PO always the author and reviewer.
Outcome
The mechanical drafting of stories and acceptance criteria is largely automated, and output holds to one standard regardless of who runs it. AI removes the busywork; the product judgement stays human. Approx 60% time saved and 40% quality improvement, as compared to manual flow, measured across sprints.
Next
Extend the skills to spec/PRD drafting and release notes, and add lightweight evals so ticket quality is measured, not just drafting speed.

