You are
the quarterback.
You make scope calls, enforce the cut list, hold the working agreement, and read the team's commitment aloud at 5:10 PM. You are also the one role on the team whose pre-flight starts a week before the day, because you run the self-assignment meeting that fills four other roles on your team. The Builder builds; you decide what gets built and what gets cut.
Eight items. Several have dependencies on each other and on Anuj's review window. Start at the top.
- 01
Read the spec end to end
Twice. The first read is for content, the second is for cuts. By the time you walk into the self-assignment meeting, you should be able to explain the spec to the team in 5 minutes from memory.
- 02
Receive and digest the role one-pagers and PO charter from Anuj
Six role one-pagers (one per role on your team) plus your charter. The charter tells you exactly what you own in the self-assignment meeting and on the day. Read both before the meeting, not after.
- 03
Schedule the recorded self-assignment meeting
All team members must attend. Calendar invite goes out at least 3 days in advance. Meeting body should include: the spec, the 6 role one-pagers, the recording-consent line, and the agenda. Schedule the meeting between 7 and 10 days before April 17 — close enough to feel real, far enough to absorb a re-shuffle.
- 04
Run the self-assignment meeting
Open with the spec walk-through (you, 5 minutes). Then walk through the 6 roles using the one-pagers. Then ask people to raise their hands for the role they want. If two people want the same role, you decide. If a role goes unclaimed, you assign. The meeting is recorded the entire time. The transcript is the team's first artifact.
- 05
Submit proposed assignments to Anuj within 24 hours
Anuj has a 24-hour review window to flag obvious mismatches. He overrides rarely. Most submissions go through unchanged. Don't wait — submit the moment the meeting ends so the review clock starts.
- 06
Brief the team in writing 2-3 days before the day
A short email or Teams message to all 7 (or 6) team members. Includes: the spec, the role assignments, the link to your team's pre-flight pages on csnycevent.com, the working agreement template, and a one-line reminder that everything is recorded. Set the tone as confident, not anxious.
- 07
Prepare the working agreement template
What gets locked in Discovery: where artifacts get dropped, the Builder's decide-without-me rule (90-second protocol), check-in cadence, what "done" looks like for the demo. Bring a draft to Discovery. The team will iterate on it in the first 60 minutes — but you bring the starting point.
- 08
Coordinate the team's recording mechanism with the Builder
The Builder picks the tool (Otter, Fireflies, etc.). You make sure it's actually running at 10:15 AM on April 17 when Discovery starts. The first 30 seconds of Discovery should be "recording is on, everyone confirmed."
Mindset, not tasks. The four things that should already be true between your ears when you walk in.
You are the team's quarterback. The Builder is the team's quietest voice.
Scope decisions go through you, not the Builder. The Builder is heads-down for most of the day; you're the one absorbing ambiguity so they can stay in flow. If the team is waiting for the Builder to make a call, you make the call instead and tell the Builder later.
Your job at 11:15 AM is to enforce the cut list.
The Builder identified the MVP slice and cut order during Discovery. As Build Sprint 1 progresses, you watch the clock and the cut list. If something is at 80% and time is short, you're the one who says "cut it, move on." The team will push back. You hold the line.
The 90-second rule is yours to enforce.
If the Builder doesn't answer a scope question within 90 seconds, you decide and move on. This is in the working agreement, but you're the one who actually applies it on the day. The Builder will thank you afterward.
You own the team's commitment in the Wrap Ritual.
At 5:10 PM your team comes to the front. You're the one holding the index card. You read the commitment aloud: ship to a named owner by a date, OR kill with a 1-pager by a date. The named owner is in the room. The date is real. Decide which form your team is taking before the Wrap starts — you'll have until ~4:45 to lock it during the retro.
Every working session on April 17 is recorded — including the self-assignment meeting you run before the day. The transcript of that meeting becomes your team's first shared artifact, and you can paste it into Claude on the morning of April 17 to ask “what did we agree on?” That's the practice the day is teaching: meeting transcripts are first-class context for the firm's LLM tooling, not ephemeral chatter.