deanpeters/pestel-delta-monitor

PESTEL Delta Monitor

Purpose

Refresh a PESTEL analysis by diffing each factor — Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal — against the prior run and reporting material movement only: search plan → factor-by-factor diff → broken assumptions → new entrants to the frame → next-step options. Macro factors move slowly, which is exactly why teams stop looking; the value of a cadence is catching the two factors that moved, not re-debating the twenty that didn't. Diffing also reveals which baseline entries were live assumptions versus furniture — broken assumptions are the real output.

Input

Works best with: the prior PESTEL analysis (pasted or attached) and the product/market scope it covered — this skill requires a baseline to diff against. Also useful: any events since the last run you already suspect matter — they get checked first.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? This is the one investigation skill with a hard prerequisite: with no baseline, it recommends running pestel-analysis first and stops — there is nothing to diff. (That referral is the empty-handed path: you leave knowing exactly what to do first.)

Example invocation: PESTEL delta against the attached Q1 analysis — scope is our EU payments product; I suspect the new AI liability directive matters.

Key Concepts

• Governing protocol: honors the autonomous-investigation contract — question budget of 2, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step. Disciplines: GEOINT/DEMOINT statistics plus FININT regulatory sources (see intelligence-collection-disciplines); this is the annual/quarterly layer of the fusion cadence.
• Materiality for macro factors: regulation passed or credibly proposed, macro indicators crossing thresholds your baseline named, technology maturation with adoption evidence, social signals with data behind them. "No material movement" per factor is a valid and common result — a quiet quarter reported honestly keeps the radar trusted.
• Broken assumptions are the headline. A baseline entry now contradicted by evidence outranks ten new observations, because strategy was built on it. The diff exists to find these.
• Assumptions vs. furniture. Entries that never move and touch no decision were furniture — flag them for retirement at the next baseline refresh rather than re-scanning them forever.
• Scope changes break diffs. New market, pivot, fundamentally different business context → redo the full PESTEL; never diff across a scope change.
• Do-not-invent list: regulations, statistics, dates, events. Real URLs and dates on everything — invented regulation is this domain's signature fabrication risk.

Application

1. Check the prerequisite. No prior PESTEL → recommend pestel-analysis and stop. Scope changed since the baseline → recommend a fresh full analysis and stop.
2. Credit inline context, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 2):
   1. Prior PESTEL to paste?
   2. Any events since then you already suspect matter?
3. Read the prior analysis fully; diff factor by factor — the baseline document is the diff target, not your general knowledge of the macro environment.
4. Show the 3-bullet search plan — which factor categories get active searching this cycle (suspected events first), source types (government and regulatory sources, central-bank and statistical data, credible news, industry bodies, standards organizations), fact/inference separation. Continue unless revised.
5. Emit the schema below exactly.

Output schema (do not reorder)

# PESTEL Delta Report

## 1. Run Header
**Scope (from prior analysis):** | **Prior analysis date:** | **This run date:**

## 2. Factor-by-Factor Delta
For each of P / E / S / T / E / L:
### [Factor]: [moved / no material movement]
- **What moved:** [1-2 bullets, labeled, cited — only if moved]
- **Prior assumption affected:** [which entry from the baseline]
- **Reading:** [Inference — implication for the product scope]

Keep "no material movement" factors to a single line each.

## 3. Broken Assumptions
- [Baseline entries now contradicted by evidence — the run's most important section; cited]

## 4. New to the Frame
- [Factors absent from the baseline that now warrant a slot]

## 5. So What?
- **3** implications for strategy or roadmap
- **2** factors to watch closely next cycle
- **3** assumptions to validate
Each bullet: label, confidence, URL where relevant.

A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in template.md.

Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)

1. Update the baseline PESTEL with these deltas (new baseline)
2. Deep-dive the most consequential moved factor
3. Trace the broken assumptions into roadmap or OKR impact
4. Set next cycle's watch priorities

Accept 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 and 2, Verbose Mode, or a custom path.

Examples

A factor that moved, traced to its assumption (fictional):

Legal: moved

• What moved: the data-residency provision cleared committee with an 18-month compliance window — Fact ([legislature record, URL, date])
• Prior assumption affected: baseline entry L2 assumed "no residency mandate before 2028," which justified deferring the regional storage architecture
• Reading: the deferral logic is dead — Inference: the architecture decision moves from someday to next two roadmap quarters, and compliance becomes a sales asset in regulated verticals before it's a legal obligation.

A quiet quarter reported honestly: five factors show "no material movement" at one line each; one Economic entry moved (a rate-path shift crossing the baseline's stated budget-gate threshold). The report is half a page. That brevity is the radar working — the reader spends two minutes and knows the strategy's macro floor held except where it didn't.

See examples/sample.md for a complete worked delta run (fictional trades-software scope) with two broken assumptions traced to their baseline entries and furniture flagged for retirement. examples/sample-industrial.md runs the industrial scope, where the hot factors swap — tariffs, energy, disclosure rules — and threshold crossings are distinguished from broken assumptions.

Common Pitfalls

• Re-debating the unmoved. Rewriting all six factors every quarter turns the radar back into the workshop it was meant to replace. One line per quiet factor — the discipline is the product.
• Materiality inflation. Promoting think-pieces and proposals-going-nowhere into "movement." The bar is passed/credibly-proposed regulation, crossed thresholds, adoption evidence — not discourse.
• Burying broken assumptions. Listing deltas without connecting them to the baseline entries they contradict. The "prior assumption affected" line is what makes a delta actionable.
• Diffing across a pivot. The business entered a new market and the monitor keeps diffing the old scope's factors. Scope change = new baseline, always.
• Invented specificity. A regulation name, effective date, or statistic that doesn't check out. In this domain a fabricated citation isn't just wrong, it's a compliance risk for the reader — the do-not-invent list is load-bearing.

References

• pestel-analysis (Component) — builds the baseline this monitor diffs against; the pair turns PESTEL into an operating radar
• autonomous-investigation (Workflow) — the governing protocol
• intelligence-collection-disciplines (Component) — GEOINT/DEMOINT statistical sources; regulatory registries
• derisk-measurement-advisor (Interactive) — consumes broken assumptions as risk inputs
• competitive-intel-watch (Workflow) — the competitor-level sibling of this macro-level watch
• Adapted from market-intelligence/pestel-delta-monitor-prompt.md in the https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.