Scenario-Based Prep — Part 2: The Frameworks Toolkit
The Frameworks Toolkit
Frameworks aren't magic words — they're compression. Naming "this is a RAPID question" lets you lay out a clean answer in seconds and signals you've seen the pattern before. Use them as scaffolding, not jargon: name it, then apply it to the specifics.
Here are the eight worth knowing cold, each with what it is, when to reach for it, and how to use it.
1. RAPID — who decides, and how
A decision-rights model that ends "who actually owns this call?" ambiguity. The letters are roles, not a sequence:
- Recommender — drives the analysis and proposes the answer.
- Approver(s) — must sign off.
- Perform / Input — those consulted for expertise or who execute.
- Decide — the single accountable decider.
When: any "a decision is stuck / who should make this call" scenario. How: assign every role a name. The most common real-world failure is too many deciders — RAPID forces exactly one.
2. Risk Matrix — Likelihood × Impact
Score each risk on two axes — how likely, how bad — and prioritize the top-right (high-likelihood, high-impact) first.
When: "here are five things that could go wrong — what do we do about them?" How: don't treat all risks equally. A likely, catastrophic data-integrity bug outranks an unlikely, cosmetic one. Example triage: data integrity (high/high → fix now), performance under load (med/high → load-test before launch), a compliance gap (low-likelihood/high-impact → flag to legal, don't block).
3. Pause – Assess – Align
The three-move response when something unsafe or non-compliant surfaces mid-execution.
- Pause the risky work (not the whole project).
- Assess the actual exposure with the right experts.
- Align on a path with the people who own the risk before resuming.
When: "you discover a compliance/security/safety problem while building." How: the senior signal is pausing the specific risky path while keeping everything else moving — and bringing legal/compliance in early, not after.
4. The Five P's — crisis communication
A checklist for what to say (and not say) when something is on fire and people want statements:
- Purpose — why we're communicating right now.
- People — who's affected and who needs to hear it.
- Process — what we're doing about it.
- Position — the single agreed message (no freelancing).
- Priority — what matters most this hour.
When: outages, security incidents, press-facing crises. How: don't speak beyond your authority; route media to official comms; keep Legal and Communications in the loop; start the root-cause analysis immediately in parallel.
5. Five Whys — root cause
Ask "why" ~five times to walk past the symptom to the underlying cause. "The site went down" → why? → "the DB maxed connections" → why? → "a migration removed pooling" → why? → "no review gate on infra changes" → there's the real fix.
When: postmortems and "why did this happen?" prompts. How: stop at a cause you can act on structurally, not a person to blame. Capture facts before opinions.
6. RACI — who does what
For each task, label people Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome — exactly one), Consulted (gives input), Informed (kept in the loop).
When: "how would you organize this project / postmortem follow-up?" How: the discipline is one A per task. RACI pairs naturally with a postmortem's action items.
7. CAGE — should we expand here?
A market-entry lens for "should we launch in country X?" — the distance that matters across four dimensions:
- Cultural — language, norms, trust.
- Administrative — law, regulation, currency, politics.
- Geographic — distance, time zones, infrastructure.
- Economic — income levels, cost structure, willingness to pay.
When: global expansion / new-market scenarios. How: don't analyze all four equally — pick the two or three decision factors that dominate this specific market and go deep.
8. Jobs-To-Be-Done — pricing & product
People "hire" a product to get a job done. Anchor pricing and product decisions on the job and its value to the customer, not on your cost.
When: pricing strategy, "how would you price/position this?" How: pair JTBD with customer conversations, willingness-to-pay research, competitive analysis, and small pricing experiments — value first, cost second.
Which framework, when — the cheat table
| If the prompt is about… | Reach for | |---|---| | A stuck or unclear decision | RAPID | | Prioritizing multiple risks | Risk Matrix | | A compliance/safety issue mid-build | Pause–Assess–Align | | An outage or press-facing crisis | Five P's | | Why something broke | Five Whys | | Organizing tasks / accountability | RACI | | Entering a new market | CAGE | | Pricing or positioning | Jobs-To-Be-Done |
Memorize the table, not paragraphs. In the moment you want to recognize the shape fast, name the framework, and then spend your time on the specifics — which is exactly what the next three parts drill, scenario by scenario.
Next — Part 3: Customer & Crisis Scenarios — enterprise escalations, launches with safety concerns, crisis comms, and the postmortem.