Meeting Notes & Strategy Updates

Strategy isn't set once and forgotten. It evolves through leadership decisions, team alignment, production learnings, and feedback loops. Meetings are where many of these changes originate.

This guide explains how to capture meeting decisions, extract implications, and propagate them through strategy, epics, and stories.

Core Workflow

Raw meeting notes
      ↓
Extract decisions & open questions
      ↓
Propose updates to strategy, epics, stories
      ↓
Review & approve changes
      ↓
Cascade impact (if strategy changed, update epics & stories)

Step 1: Capture Raw Meeting Notes

When a meeting happens, save notes in /meetings/:

File: /meetings/YYYY-MM-DD-meeting-name.md

---
kind: meeting
title: "Design Review – Checkout Flow"
date: 2025-02-08
attendees:
  - alice@example.com  # PM
  - charlie@example.com  # Designer
  - david@example.com  # Engineer
duration_minutes: 60
decisions_for:
  - EP-003
  - ST-EP003-001
related_epics:
  - EP-003
  - EP-004
next_review: 2025-02-15
---

# Design Review – Checkout Flow

**Date:** 2025-02-08  
**Attendees:** Alice (PM), Charlie (Designer), David (Engineer)  
**Related:** EP-003 (Checkout Redesign)

## Agenda
1. Review checkout flow redesign mockups
2. Discuss 3-D Secure error handling
3. Finalize scope for sprint 2025-W07

## Discussion Summary

### 1. Checkout Flow Redesign
Charlie walked through revised wireframes. Feedback:

- David: Form layout is cleaner; reduces cognitive load
- Alice: Needs fallback for users without JS enabled
- Decision: Proceed with design; add JS-free path as separate story

### 2. 3-D Secure Error Handling
Raised by David: "What happens if 3-D Secure auth fails?"
- Current: Generic error message
- Problem: Users don't know if they should retry or contact support
- Alice: I've heard this from multiple customers (see INS-012)
- Charlie: Can design better error state + retry flow
- **DECISION:** Deprecate in-app password reset to simplify scope. Use saved space for improved 3-D Secure recovery UX.

### 3. Scope for Sprint 2025-W07
- ✅ Basic form layout
- ✅ Field validation UX
- ❓ JS-free fallback (may slip)
- ❓ 3-D Secure error recovery (depends on design)

## Open Questions
- Should we support legacy browsers for checkout? (Alice to follow up with product leadership)
- How many users try 3-D Secure without JS? (David to query metrics)

## Action Items
- Alice: Decide on legacy browser support by 2025-02-15
- Charlie: Design 3-D Secure error flow by 2025-02-12
- David: Query 3-D Secure usage metrics by 2025-02-10

## Decisions Summary
- **Deprecate in-app password reset** (move complexity to 3-D Secure recovery)
- **Add 3-D Secure error recovery epic** (high user demand)

Key elements:

Front-matter with metadata (who, what epics)
Agenda and summary
Explicit decisions (marked clearly)
Open questions
Action items with owners and due dates

Step 2: Extract Decisions & Questions

After the meeting, synthesize what changed:

# Decisions & Follow-ups from Design Review (2025-02-08)

## Decisions Made
1. **Deprecate in-app password reset** from EP-003 scope
   - Rationale: Simplifies form; users prefer email reset
   - Impact: Frees designer time for 3-D Secure error recovery
   - Status: Ready to cascade to EP-003 scope

2. **Add 3-D Secure error recovery as separate epic**
   - Rationale: Multiple customer complaints (INS-012)
   - Proposed: EP-004-3DS-recovery-flow
   - Scope: Improved error messaging, retry UX, support escalation path
   - Timeline: 2025-Q1 candidate

## Open Questions (to resolve by 2025-02-15)
- Q1: Should checkout support legacy browsers (IE 11)?
  - Owner: Alice
  - Why: Affects form complexity and testing cost
  - Impact: High (may add 1–2 weeks to timeline)

- Q2: How many users encounter 3-D Secure without JS?
  - Owner: David
  - Why: Informs scope of JS-free fallback
  - Impact: Medium (affects story prioritization)

## Action Items
| Owner | Task | Due |
|-------|------|-----|
| Alice | Decide on legacy browser support | 2025-02-15 |
| Charlie | Design 3-D Secure error flow | 2025-02-12 |
| David | Query 3-D Secure metrics | 2025-02-10 |

## Next Review
2025-02-15 (follow-up sync)

Step 3: Propose Strategy & Epic Updates

Once you understand what changed, propose edits. Use this template:

If Strategy Changes

Prompt to LLM:

"From meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md, list decisions that affect product-strategy.md. For each: 1) What strategically changed? 2) Where in strategy.md should it update? 3) Show the old text → new text as a diff."

Example decision:

In the meeting, you decided to deprecate in-app password reset. If that was in your strategy, update it:

Before:

## Authentication

Users can reset passwords through:

- In-app flow (security questions)
- Email verification link
- SMS code

After:

## Authentication

Users can reset passwords through:

- Email verification link (primary path)
- SMS code (fallback for users without email access)

Non-goal: In-app password reset (redirects to email).

Update: product-strategy.md (if strategy entry exists) or product-evidence.md (if it's a supporting detail).

If Epic Scope Changes

Prompt to LLM:

"From meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md, extract scope changes for EP-003. Show: 1) What was removed or added? 2) Diff-style edits to /delivery/epic-003-/epic-003-.md 3) Which stories are affected?"

Example:

If EP-003 scope changed (lost password reset, gained 3-D Secure recovery), update the epic:

In EP-003 epic file, Functional Scope section:

Before:

### 3. Functional Scope
Users can:

- Complete checkout with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay
- Reset forgotten passwords in-app
- See real-time validation errors

After:

### 3. Functional Scope
Users can:

- Complete checkout with card, Apple Pay, Google Pay
- See real-time validation errors
- Handle 3-D Secure authentication with graceful fallback

Out of scope:

- In-app password reset (moved to authentication epic)
- Legacy browser support (IE 11 and earlier)

If New Epic Needs Creation

Prompt to LLM:

"From meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md, create a new epic for 3-D Secure error recovery based on: - INS-012 (discovery/insights.md) - Decision to deprecate password reset - Expected Q1 timeline Use /delivery/epic-004-3ds-recovery-flow/epic-004-3ds-recovery-flow.md as the template."

Step 4: Review & Approve

Before cascading changes:

Create a pull request for all proposed updates

Reference the meeting in the PR description:

# Changes from Design Review (2025-02-08)

- Deprecate in-app password reset from EP-003
- Create EP-004 for 3-D Secure recovery
- Update strategy.md #authentication section

Related: meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md

Request review from key stakeholders (PM lead, engineering, design)
Merge once approved

Step 5: Cascade Changes

If strategy or epic scope changed, refresh downstream artifacts:

If Strategy Changed

Regenerate affected epics and stories.

Prompt:

"product-strategy.md recently changed (see PR #123). For each affected epic below, propose updates to keep scope aligned: - EP-003 (Checkout) - EP-004 (Payments)

Show diffs for each."

If Epic Scope Changed

Update or create affected stories.

Prompt:

"EP-003 scope has been updated (in-app password reset removed; 3-D Secure recovery added). Update or remove stories based on new scope. Specifically: - ST-EP003-005 (in-app password reset) → mark deprecated or delete - Create 2–3 new stories for 3-D Secure recovery Show diffs for each change."

Example: Complete Meeting → Update Flow

Meeting Notes (Feb 8)

---
kind: meeting
title: "Design Review"
date: 2025-02-08
decisions_for:
  - EP-003
---

# Design Review – Feb 8

...

**DECISION:** Deprecate in-app password reset.
Rationale: Low usage, frees scope for 3-D Secure recovery.

**DECISION:** Create EP-004 for 3-D Secure recovery.
Timeline: 2025-Q1. Owner: alice@example.com

Extract (Feb 8, after meeting)

# Decisions from Design Review

1. Deprecate in-app password reset from EP-003 scope
→ Affects: product-strategy.md, EP-003, ST-EP003-005
→ Status: Ready to cascade

2. Create EP-004 for 3-D Secure recovery
→ Affects: /delivery/ folder, product-backlog
→ Status: Design in flight (Charlie); ready by Feb 12

3. Defer legacy browser support (to be decided by Feb 15)
→ Affects: EP-003 timeline, technical complexity
→ Status: Open question

Propose Updates (Feb 8 PM, via PR)

# PR: Incorporate Feb 8 Design Review decisions

Changes:
1. Update product-strategy.md: Remove in-app password reset from auth scope  
2. Update EP-003: Remove password reset stories; note out-of-scope
3. Mark ST-EP003-005 as deprecated
4. Create EP-004-3DS-recovery-flow (draft)
5. Update delivery-context.md to reflect new epics

Decisions: See meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md

Merge & Cascade (Feb 9)

Once PR approved:

Strategy changed → regenerate affected epics via LLM
Epic scope changed → update stories
New epic created → generate initial stories for EP-004
Update delivery-context.md with new epic

Meeting Notes Best Practices

✓ Capture decisions explicitly – Use "DECISION:" or highlight them clearly
✓ Link to evidence – Reference insights, data, or prior decisions
✓ Record owners & due dates – Makes follow-up automatic
✓ Note open questions – Even if you don't decide, document what's unclear
✓ Update strategy/epics systematically – Don't let decisions scatter across Slack
✓ Archive old notes – After decisions have been incorporated, move to /meetings/archive/

File Organization

/meetings
  meetings-context.md  # Recent decisions, upcoming reviews

  # Active meetings
  2025-02-15-roadmap-planning.md
  2025-02-08-design-review.md
  2025-02-01-sync.md

  /archive
    2024-Q4-retrospective.md
    2024-Q3-planning.md
    2024-planning-meetings/

Integration with Ops Tracking

Update /ops/status.md weekly to reflect recent meeting decisions:

# Status – Week 2025-W07

## Notable Decisions (Last 7 Days)
- Deprecate in-app password reset from EP-003 (meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md)
- Approved EP-004-3DS-recovery-flow for Q1 (meetings/2025-02-08-design-review.md)

## Outstanding Questions
- Legacy browser support decision due Feb 15 (alice@)
- 3-D Secure usage metrics due Feb 10 (david@)