# Team Discussion (opt-in)

An optional discussion layer over Phase 2's findings, off by default. It exists for users who want the retrospective discussed from multiple perspectives, the way a team would. One rule: **the team discusses evidence, never invention.** Agents speak only to findings that carry source references. No agent may describe an event that did not happen or report a pattern the diff does not show.

## When to run it

Only when asked — "discuss it as a team," "run party mode," or similar. A default run never enters this phase.

## How to run it

Invoke **`bmad-party-mode`**, seeded with the consolidated Phase 2 findings and the epic context, so the installed agents react as real subagents with independent thinking rather than a scripted dialogue. Seed it with:

- The findings, each with its source reference, grouped by the aggregate view or lens that produced it.
- The improvements the evidence confirms — real gains, patterns that worked — so positive observations are grounded in fact.
- The epic's acceptance criteria (or the profiled stand-in), so the discussion can weigh the verdict.
- The previous epic's action items and whether they landed, when a prior retro exists, so accountability is grounded in fact.

If `bmad-party-mode` is unavailable, a discussion the user asked for must not silently fail to happen. Run it inline over the same seed — take each perspective yourself, hold every perspective to sourced findings — and record in the retrospective document that the discussion ran inline rather than through the installed agents. Record it as the narrowing it is: one model playing every role loses the independent disagreement that surfaces missed findings. State that in the document rather than omitting it.

Facilitate in `{communication_language}`, keep the user an active participant, and steer toward systemic understanding over blame — the point is which process or convention would have prevented a finding, not who wrote the line. Capture anything the discussion surfaces that the analyses missed; a genuinely new observation becomes a finding only once you can tie it to a source, otherwise it is a question for Phase 4, not a conclusion.

The discussion does not replace Phase 4. Its output feeds the action items and the verdict; it does not render them.