Guided walkthrough · 8 MIN
Explore the software lifecycle
Follow an export feature from its requirement to operation. Inspect the owner, evidence, and decision at each stage.
The situation
You own a customer management service. A manager asks for a file of active customers from their own organization. Follow this fictional feature from the request to its operation.
What to do
- Start with Need. Use Next stage to follow the same feature through all seven stages.
- At each stage, read the example evidence. Decide whether it answers the decision question, then open the explanation.
SCENARIO: CUSTOMER EXPORT
Evidence is a document or check result that supports a decision. Each stage below gives an example. Follow the sequence or select a stage directly.
STAGE 1 / 7
Need
A manager needs to export active customers from their own organization.
- Owner
- Product owner
- Evidence
- Accepted outcome and permitted fields
A manager spends one hour each week collecting active customers. Accepted need: export names and customer IDs from their own organization to CSV.
STAGE 2 / 7
Specification
Define permitted users, data, failure behavior, and acceptance criteria.
- Owner
- Product and security owners
- Evidence
- Data flow and authorization requirement
Acceptance criterion: a manager from organization A receives no records from organization B, even after changing request identifiers.
STAGE 3 / 7
Implementation
The agent prepares a small change in a feature branch.
- Owner
- Development team
- Evidence
- Diff linked to the requirement
The PR adds an organization filter to the database query and a test for another organization’s request. It leaves login and billing unchanged.
STAGE 4 / 7
Verification
Inspect real authorization and forbidden requests.
- Owner
- Independent reviewer
- Evidence
- Tests and review for the final commit
A test on the final commit shows that a user from organization A cannot receive B’s records. A reviewer checks the authorization chain.
STAGE 5 / 7
Release
Deploy the accepted artifact with the permitted deployment role.
- Owner
- Release owner
- Evidence
- Artifact identifier, approval, and recovery plan
The release owner matches the artifact commit to the reviewed commit. Recovery instructions name the previous version and the person who can start rollback.
STAGE 6 / 7
Operation
Monitor export failures, access controls, and service behavior.
- Owner
- Service owner
- Evidence
- Metrics, limited audit logs, and incident instructions
Export failure alerts reach the on-call engineer. Limited audit logs record the actor and organization without copying the complete customer list.
STAGE 7 / 7
Learning
Assess use and observed problems before the next change.
- Owner
- Product owner and team
- Evidence
- Feedback and an updated work queue
A support request reports failed exports for large customer lists. The team adds a performance requirement and test to the next change.
The sequence can repeat. New evidence can return the work to specification or implementation.
TO FINISH
The code works. Why can the team not stop at Implementation?
Compare your answer with the explanation
Working code does not show who may access the records or who will handle failures. Verification checks the data boundary. Release connects that evidence to the deployed version. Operation assigns responsibility for the running service. Learning turns observed problems into the next change.
Use this at work
For one feature in your team, name the release owner and the person who receives its failure alerts.
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