Goal of this stage: Force org-wide commitment to what we definitely are doing. Get everything ready to actually start executing.

This is the first time you finally marry what you want to do to who is going to do it, for realsies. This is where individual career growth, the company’s goals, the shape of your hiring, people’s vacations, people’s individual variability in delivery all come in to bear. This is the part people tend to try to skip directly to without having done the other stuff first, usually with disasterous results. If you’ve made it this far then, finally, you should have a plan that your engineering team actually commits to, and you should feel entitled to hold them to that commitment. No more excuses.