01
Restate the original contract
People forget what "done" was.
Made for Engineers
Cut a Scope Bomb Without Becoming the Team That Only Says No
Also useful for: Engineering Managers, people in Technology
30 min
Intermediate
Technology
Engineer
Career outcome:
Save Professional Time
Turn an oversized ask into a sequenced yes with an explicit not-now list.
We'll use them to write your prompt.
Completed ✓
Make Your Play
Give us the situation. We’ll build the prompt.
Unscoped yeses create incident debt.
Your answers save as you type.
What you'll do
This is the plan inside your prompt. Add your details first. Then follow these steps with ChatGPT or Claude.
02
Cut with a smaller yes
No without a path is a stall.
03
Write the stakeholder conversation
Lead with impact, not workload feelings.
04
Write it down after they choose
Memory isn't a ticket.
Make Your Play
Cut a Scope Bomb Without Becoming the Team That Only Says No
Tell us what the prompt needs to know
Start with the questions below. Each answer personalizes the playbook and builds the prompt you’ll use at the end.
Your situation
What was actually agreed, with date.
0/10000
The new asks and who asked.
0/10000
People and calendar, including test and freeze.
Contract, marketing, partner, on-call.
0/10000
This playbook was updated. Review your inputs before copying.
What you'll do
Check a step when you finish it.
01
Restate the original contract
People forget what "done" was.
02
Cut with a smaller yes
No without a path is a stall.
03
Write the stakeholder conversation
Lead with impact, not workload feelings.
04
Write it down after they choose
Memory isn't a ticket.
Fill in the fields above to generate your prompt preview.
Assembled prompt
Beginner instructions
Fill the fields with this week’s real details. Incomplete notes beat invented polish.
Run the assembled prompt, answer follow-ups with specifics, then copy the deliverable into your own doc and verify names and numbers.
Advanced instructions
Add constraints the model can’t see: politics, licensing, cash timing, union rules, or family bandwidth.
After the first pass, ask it to attack the weakest assumption in the draft.
Use this when
A stakeholder added "just one more" thing that doubles the work, or a launch date didn't change when the list did.
You'll need
- Original committed slice
- What just got added
- Capacity left
- What breaks if you slip
You'll get
- A a cut line, a smaller yes, and talking points for the stakeholder you can use without rewriting it from scratch.
By the end of this playbook
You will have:
- A a cut line, a smaller yes, and talking points for the stakeholder you can use without rewriting it from scratch.
Examples
Progress 1 of 4