---
name: avizmarlon/progress-md-business
source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/avizmarlon-progress-md-business@1/SKILL.md
source_sha256: 1e5f1ea34002
---

# PROGRESS.md — Executive Dashboard for Business Projects

This skill enforces the creation and maintenance of `PROGRESS.md` as the authoritative executive dashboard for any business or product project. The file is read first by stakeholders and AI agents to understand current state, next phase, and key metrics.

## Core Rule

**Every business or product project MUST have `PROGRESS.md` at the repository root.** This file serves as the single source of truth for project phase, vision, milestones, and impact metrics. It is NOT a changelog, NOT a technical design document, and NOT a session handoff—it is the executive view.

## What PROGRESS.md Contains

- **Project phase** — current state (Validation → Build → Launch → Growth → Paused → Cancelled)
- **Project vision** — problem statement, target customer, differentiated value, revenue model
- **High-level milestones** — key deliverables by phase with completion status
- **Impact metrics** — quantitative measures of progress (user growth, retention, revenue, engagement, etc.)
- **Current blockers** — what is preventing progress, with severity
- **Next phase transition criteria** — what must be true to move to the next phase

## What PROGRESS.md Does NOT Contain

- **Technical changelog** → lives in `CHANGELOG.md` (structured, versioned)
- **Architecture decisions** → live in `ADRs` or `architecture-decisions.md`
- **Inter-session context** → lives in `session-handoff.md` or equivalent
- **Code review state** → lives in `review-state.md` or inline pull requests
- **Implementation details** → live in issue trackers, code comments, design docs

PROGRESS.md is **executive summary only**. It points to other documents rather than duplicating them.

## Template Structure

Use this structure as a starting point. Customize sections based on project type (B2B SaaS, consumer app, marketplace, etc.):

```markdown
# PROJECT_NAME — PROGRESS

## Current Phase
🔵 **Build** — ETA next phase: [DATE]

## Vision
**Problem:** [one-sentence problem statement]
**ICP:** [ideal customer profile]
**USP:** [unique value vs. alternatives]
**Revenue Model:** [how money flows]

## Milestones (Current Phase: Build)
- [✓ / ○] Milestone A — [target date]
- [✓ / ○] Milestone B — [target date]
- [✓ / ○] Milestone C — [target date]

## Key Metrics (Last Updated: [DATE])
| Metric | Value | Target | Status |
|--------|-------|--------|--------|
| [Metric A] | [current] | [goal] | [trend: ↑ / ↓ / → ] |
| [Metric B] | [current] | [goal] | [trend] |

## Blockers
🔴 **[Blocker Title]** — [description, impact]
🟡 **[Blocker Title]** — [description, impact]

## Next Phase Criteria
To transition to [Next Phase], these conditions must be met:
- Condition 1
- Condition 2
- Condition 3

## Session Updates
- **[DATE]** — [what changed; link to session handoff or PR if applicable]
- **[DATE]** — [what changed]
```

## Maintenance Workflow

1. **Session Start:** Read `PROGRESS.md` first. Summarize current phase and blockers.
2. **During Work:** Continue normally. Track decisions that affect phase, metrics, or blockers.
3. **Session End:** 
   - Update phase if changed
   - Mark milestones completed in this session
   - Revise metrics if new data
   - Add new blockers or resolve closed ones
   - Timestamp the update with a brief note

**Update frequency:** After every substantive work session, at phase transitions, when metrics change meaningfully, or when blockers are resolved.

## Scope: What Projects Require PROGRESS.md

**REQUIRED:**
- Business projects (startups, side businesses, products with revenue or user acquisition targets)
- Product projects (consumer apps, SaaS, marketplaces, platforms)
- Any project with explicit phases (Validation → Build → Launch → Growth)

**NOT REQUIRED:**
- Infrastructure-only projects (infrastructure-as-code repos, deployment automation, tooling)
- One-off scripts or utilities
- Libraries with no business model
- Open-source projects without user growth targets

When in doubt: if the project has phases, metrics, and a decision-maker tracking status, it needs PROGRESS.md.

## Example Phases and Transitions

| Phase | Characteristics | Milestones | Exit Criteria |
|-------|-----------------|------------|---------------|
| **Validation** | Idea stage, customer research, market fit exploration | Market research complete, 10+ customer interviews done, value prop validated | Clear problem, known ICP, evidence of demand |
| **Build** | MVP development, feature implementation, closed beta | MVP shipped, 10+ beta users, feature parity with spec | Product works, beta retention >50%, ready for public launch |
| **Launch** | Public release, go-to-market, user acquisition | Public launch, marketing campaign, support infrastructure | First 100 users acquired organically, NPS >40 |
| **Growth** | Scale, optimize, expand use cases | [Custom milestones per business] | Unit economics positive, sustainable growth rate |
| **Paused** | Intentional hold (funding gap, pivot, team change) | [Context-dependent] | Decision to resume or cancel |
| **Cancelled** | Project ended, resources reallocated | [Post-mortem completed] | N/A — terminal state |

## Integration With Other Project Artifacts

**PROGRESS.md owns:** phase, vision, metrics, blockers, phase-transition criteria.

**Peer documents it references:**
- `CHANGELOG.md` — "What shipped and when" (technical, detailed)
- `session-handoff.md` — "State of work between sessions" (context for next AI agent or human)
- `ADRs` / `architecture.md` — "Why we made these technical choices"
- `README.md` — "How to use/deploy this project"
- Issue tracker or `roadmap.md` — "Detailed feature backlog"

**Weekly stakeholder check-in?** Open `PROGRESS.md` first. It answers "where are we" in 2 minutes.

## Anti-Patterns (Prohibited)

❌ **No PROGRESS.md in business projects** — "We track it in Notion / Slack / spreadsheet" → Creates single-point-of-failure, couples project state to external tool, invisible to new team members.

❌ **PROGRESS.md with only technical milestones** — "UI built, API done, DB migrated" → That's a technical checklist, not an executive dashboard. Milestones should be user-facing or business-facing ("MVP beta shipped with 50 users").

❌ **Metrics that don't reflect business health** — "Lines of code, test coverage, CI/CD uptime" → These are technical health, not business health. Include user acquisition, retention, conversion, revenue, or engagement.

❌ **PROGRESS.md updated only at end-of-project or on request** → It goes stale. Update it every session. Stale = unreliable.

❌ **Mixing PROGRESS.md with CHANGELOG.md** — "Fixed bug X, shipped feature Y, released v2.1" → One file is technical versioning (`CHANGELOG`), the other is executive status (`PROGRESS`). Separate them.

## Application

**Applies to:** all AI agents (Claude, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, etc.), all business and product projects.

**Triggers for this skill:**
- Starting a new business or product project
- MVP definition or scope review
- Phase transition decision
- Metric tracking or impact analysis
- Stakeholder status update
- New session on a business project

**Coordination:** Works with `business-guardrails` (validation before build), `impact-metrics-gate` (metrics definition), and `adr-spec-gate` (architecture decisions). PROGRESS.md answers "where are we"; guardrails ensure "should we be here at all"; metrics ensure "how do we measure success."

## Example: Real Project PROGRESS.md

```markdown
# TaskFlow — PROGRESS

## Current Phase
🟢 **Growth** — Stable, tracking 15% MoM user growth

## Vision
**Problem:** Teams lose context switching between task managers, calendars, and Slack
**ICP:** Remote teams <50 people, async-first cultures
**USP:** Single interface combining tasks + scheduling + comms, no extra app
**Revenue Model:** $10/user/month, free tier for <5 users

## Milestones (Current Phase: Growth)
- [✓] Free tier launched (Jun 2024)
- [✓] Slack integration MVP (Jul 2024)
- [○] Calendar sync with 3+ providers (target: Sep 2024)
- [○] Team analytics dashboard (target: Oct 2024)

## Key Metrics (Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024)
| Metric | Current | Target | Trend |
|--------|---------|--------|-------|
| Active Users | 487 | 1000 | ↑ 12% MoM |
| Free-to-Paid Conversion | 3.2% | 5% | ↑ 0.4pp |
| Monthly Churn | 2.8% | <2% | ↓ 0.5pp |
| NPS | 42 | 50+ | ↑ 3pts |
| MRR | $1,240 | $5,000 | ↑ 18% |

## Blockers
🔴 **Salesforce sync is broken** — CRM customers requesting Salesforce sync; currently API-side limitation. Blocks enterprise tier. ETA fix: 2 weeks.

🟡 **Support load unsustainable** — 2 support engineers for 500 users. Need triage automation. Blocks growth past 1000 users without hiring.

## Next Phase Criteria
To transition to "Mature," we need:
- MRR >$10k, 2000+ users
- Free-to-paid conversion >5%
- NPS >50
- Churn <2% and stable

## Session Updates
- **Jun 14** — Calendar sync spec finalized; started implementation sprint
- **Jun 10** — Onboarded first 3 enterprise customers; MRR crossed $1k
- **Jun 5** — Slack integration shipped; 40% adoption in beta cohort
```

Use this as your living document. Update it every session. The simplicity of PROGRESS.md compared to lengthy status reports is its greatest strength.