You promoted someone to manager.
They were your best performer.
Six months later, they quit. Their team is a mess.
They had the skills. They had the desire.
But they were not ready for management.
The problem is not talent or timing. It is assuming conditions are met when they are not.
INTERMEDIATE - Essential for reliable automation and workflow triggers.
Before anything moves to the next stage, something has to check if the conditions are right. Not just "is this good enough?" but "are all the prerequisites actually met?" Readiness scoring answers that question systematically.
Think of it as a preflight checklist. A pilot does not take off because the plane looks fine. They verify fuel, instruments, weather, clearance. Each item is a readiness signal. All must pass before wheels leave the ground.
Readiness is different from quality or priority. A high-quality item might not be ready (missing approvals). A high-priority item might not be ready (dependencies incomplete). Readiness asks: "Can this safely proceed right now?"
Skip the readiness check and you launch things that crash. Enforce it and you only move forward when success is actually possible.
Readiness scoring is not just about automation workflows. It is a pattern that appears whenever you need to verify prerequisites before proceeding.
Nothing should advance until its dependencies are satisfied. Check before you move, not after you fail.
Click any prerequisite to toggle it. Try to launch with missing blockers.
Blockers cleared. Review warnings before proceeding.
All conditions must be true to proceed
The simplest approach. Define a list of required conditions. If any is false, the item is not ready. No nuance, no weights. Either everything is green or it does not move forward.
Score must exceed minimum to proceed
Assign weights to different readiness factors. Sum them up. If the total exceeds a threshold, the item is ready. Allows some flexibility while still enforcing standards. "90% ready is good enough for low-risk items."
Different conditions required at each stage
Different stages have different readiness requirements. Stage 1 might need basic info. Stage 2 needs approvals. Stage 3 needs resources allocated. Each gate has its own checklist that must pass before advancing.
You launch the project, then discover the budget was never approved. Now you are scrambling to pause something already in motion. Everyone is frustrated, time is wasted, and trust erodes.
Instead: Build readiness checks into the workflow trigger. Nothing starts until the gate passes.
The output is done, so it must be ready for handoff. But the receiving team has no capacity, no context, and no time. "Complete" does not mean the next stage can actually accept it.
Instead: Include downstream readiness in your checks. Is the receiver actually prepared?
Missing a minor piece of documentation blocks a time-sensitive launch. Not everything is equally important. Treating all conditions as blockers creates unnecessary delays.
Instead: Distinguish between hard blockers and soft warnings. Some items can proceed with caveats.
You've learned how to systematically verify prerequisites before allowing anything to proceed. The natural next step is understanding how to rank what is ready by importance.