Specification-First Delivery
Defines Specification-First Delivery as a cross-functional engineering framework for turning organizational knowledge and professional judgment into trusted software.
Foundational white papers
The Spec-First Hub
A structured directory of foundational papers for studying, applying, and challenging Specification-First Delivery.
- Collection
- 5
- Foundational White Papers
- 31
- Connected Delivery System
- 1
1
Delivery Foundations
Core papers defining Specification-First Delivery and the shared Knowledge System that supports it.
The Shared Knowledge System
Defines the durable organizational and product knowledge that humans and AI need to understand, change, and continue software without rebuilding context from memory.
Knowledge Convergence Across the Increment Lifecycle
Explains how local engineering judgment, implementation learning, and competing approaches converge into coherent shared knowledge as a delivery increment progresses.
Requirements, Structured Discussion, and Increments
Explains how structured discussion usually opens a delivery increment, while also establishing durable knowledge when no software change is yet required.
Trusted Increments and Acceptance Evidence
Explains how verification evidence, conformance review, required knowledge updates, and accountable acceptance turn a completed change into a trusted increment.
2
Preparing the Knowledge System
Establishing the durable product, engineering, and organizational knowledge that humans and AI need before implementing increments.
Knowledge System Readiness for Specification-First Delivery
Defines an initial, practical readiness baseline for a shared Knowledge System, including authoritative knowledge, joint human-and-AI access, engineering reproducibility, decision authority, and unfamiliar-participant validation.
Product Intent
Explains how to record why a product exists, which outcomes and priorities matter, and which opportunities are outside its purpose.
Personas and Actors
Defines operational personas and human Actors as governed product knowledge that preserves stable roles, evolving operating conditions, authority, pain points, and the context needed for persona-guided delivery decisions.
Stable Use Cases
Defines Stable Use Cases as durable product knowledge that connects recurring persona goals to recognizable outcomes, preserves traceability across product evolution, and provides reusable context for increment-specific specifications.
Product Language and Data Semantics
Defines how a product establishes current language and data semantics, interprets organizational and external meanings in consumer context, and governs ownership, canonicality, and semantic change.
Standing Product Requirements and Constraints
Defines standing product requirements as durable specifications that applicable delivery increments consume, preserve, verify, or explicitly revise.
Formation and Governance of Architecture Knowledge
Defines how architecture knowledge is formed from governed inputs, gains authority through accountable publication, and guides later specifications.
Security and Privacy Requirements
Establishes security and privacy as reusable Standing Requirements, with specialist authority, explicit product context, coordinated controls, and continuing review.
Capacity, Reliability, and Operational Requirements
Explains how Structured Discussion adapts business needs, policy, and SRE principles into product requirements that guide architecture, functional and technical specifications, code, and operation.
3
Implementing an Increment
The path from structured discussion and reviewed requirements to executable work, verification evidence, and acceptance.
4
Software Development Scenarios
How the framework applies to new systems, existing estates, system rewrites, and configured third-party software.
5
Organization & Profession
Papers for designing an organization, cultivating the Specification Architect role, and hiring for the discipline.