TPM Guide

This guide is for you if you drive project planning, manage requirements, coordinate sprints, triage backlogs, or bridge business needs to technical delivery. TPMs have the widest tooling surface in HVE Core, with 32+ addressable assets spanning discovery, product definition, decomposition, sprint planning, and delivery.

Capability Groups

TIP

Install the HVE Core extension from the VS Code Marketplace for the complete active component set with zero configuration.

For selective clone adoption, choose requirements, agile coaching, backlog-management, and delivery-planning components that match your program. Backlog management is not split by tracker: one set of components resolves Azure DevOps, GitHub, or Jira at runtime. Capability groups help you discover related components; they are not independently installable products. See the Installation Guide.

What HVE Core Does for You

1. Generates business requirements documents (BRDs) from stakeholder conversations
2. Transforms BRDs into product requirements documents (PRDs) with traceability
3. Decomposes PRDs into Azure DevOps work items with proper hierarchy
4. Discovers, categorizes, and triages GitHub issues across repositories
5. Plans sprints with priority-based issue selection and capacity considerations
6. Provides agile coaching and product management advisory guidance
7. Tracks backlog health and identifies stale or duplicate issues

Your Lifecycle Stages

NOTE

TPMs primarily operate in these lifecycle stages:

Stage 2: Discovery: Research requirements, gather context, discover existing issues Stage 3: Product Definition: Create BRDs and PRDs, define product specifications Stage 4: Decomposition: Break down requirements into work items and tasks Stage 5: Sprint Planning: Triage issues, plan sprints, manage backlog Stage 8: Delivery: Track delivery, update work items, close milestones

Stage Walkthrough

1. Stage 2: Discovery. Run /rpi-research for technical investigation and /backlog-plan discover to find and categorize existing work items across trackers.
2. Stage 3: Product Definition. Use the brd-builder agent to create business requirements, then the prd-builder agent to generate a product specification from the BRD.
3. Stage 4: Decomposition. Plan a work item hierarchy from PRD requirements with the read-only functional-planner agent, then apply its reviewed handoff with /backlog-execute run.
4. Stage 5: Sprint Planning. Triage discovered items with /backlog-plan triage, then build the sprint with /backlog-plan sprint. Both are read-only and produce plans that a separate /backlog-execute run pass applies.
5. Stage 8: Delivery. Update work items as features ship, close completed milestones, and track delivery metrics.

Starter Prompts

Select brd-builder agent:

Create a business requirements document for the customer onboarding portal.
Target enterprise customers with 500+ seats, with the objective of reducing
onboarding time from 2 weeks to 3 days. Include integration requirements
for existing SSO and billing systems and SOC 2 Type II compliance constraints.

Select prd-builder agent:

Generate a PRD from the BRD at docs/project-planning/customer-onboarding-v2.md.
Focus on the self-service registration flow with acceptance criteria for
each user story, non-functional requirements for sub-200ms API responses,
and a data migration plan from the legacy system.

/backlog-plan discover

Select backlog-manager agent:

Refine the user story for the notification preferences feature. The current
story says "users can manage notifications" but lacks specifics. Target
mobile and web channels, support per-category opt-in/opt-out, and ensure
GDPR consent tracking. Help me write acceptance criteria that are binary
and testable.

Select functional-planner agent:

Convert the PRD at docs/project-planning/notification-service-v3.md into an Azure
DevOps work item hierarchy plan. Map each functional requirement to a user story
and each non-functional requirement to a task under the "Platform Quality" epic.
Set iteration path to Sprint 24.

Review the resulting handoff, then apply it:

/backlog-execute run

Key Agents and Workflows

Agent or skill	Purpose	Docs
brd-builder	Business requirements document creation	Agent file
prd-builder	Product requirements document generation	Agent file
functional-planner	PRD to work item hierarchy planning, read-only	Agent file
backlog-manager	Work discovery, triage, sprint planning, and execution across trackers	Backlog Management
ux-ui-designer	UX/UI design guidance and review	Agent file
rpi-research	Deep technical and requirement research	RPI docs
RPI Agent	RPI lifecycle coordination	RPI docs
dt-coach	Design Thinking coaching for stakeholder alignment and scope conversations	Design Thinking

TPMs benefit from dt-coach when stakeholder alignment requires structured scope conversations (Method 1) or when requirements gathering needs empathy-driven research techniques. Design Thinking methods produce validated problem statements and stakeholder maps that strengthen BRD creation.

Tips

Do	Don't
Start with a BRD before jumping to work item creation	Create work items without documented requirements
Use /backlog-plan discover before manual searches	Manually scan repositories for open issues
Let /backlog-plan sprint propose sprint priorities	Assign sprint items without capacity or priority analysis
Triage issues with labels and milestones systematically	Leave discovered issues uncategorized
Use the backlog-manager agent for backlog operations	Manage issues manually without backlog automation

Related Roles

• TPM + Security Architect: Secure product launches require requirements gathering paired with security model analysis and compliance verification. Security plans integrate into the BRD/PRD workflow. See the Security Architect Guide.
• TPM + Engineer: TPMs define requirements and manage backlogs while engineers implement. Work item decomposition flows directly into RPI planning. See the Engineer Guide.

Next Steps

TIP

Explore backlog automation across trackers: Backlog Management Understand the full project lifecycle: AI-Assisted Project Lifecycle Review collaboration with Security: Security Architect Guide

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