Document ID: AOD-007 Version: 1.0.0 Status: Approved

Depends On:

• AOD-001 Manifest
• AOD-002 Core Principles
• AOD-003 AI Responsibilities
• AOD-004 Human Responsibilities
• AOD-005 Initialization Prompt
• AOD-006 Discovery Workflow

Required By:

• Architecture Workflow

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Purpose

The Governance phase transforms the shared understanding established during Discovery into a structured engineering foundation.

Its purpose is to establish a complete, consistent, and maintainable set of governance documents that become the Single Source of Truth for the remainder of the project.

No architecture or implementation work should begin until Governance has been completed and approved.

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Objectives

Governance establishes:

• Project direction
• Product definition
• Common vocabulary
• Business rules
• Design constraints
• Engineering standards
• Decision history
• Long-term maintainability

Every governance artifact should reduce ambiguity and improve future decision making.

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Governance Principles

Governance documentation should be:

Complete

Consistent

Understandable

Version controlled

Business focused

Technology independent whenever practical

Easy to maintain

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Required Governance Artifacts

Every AOD project should produce the following documents unless the human explicitly determines they are unnecessary.

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Product Bible

Defines the product vision, goals, customer value, guiding philosophy, and long-term direction.

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Source of Truth

Captures the authoritative understanding of the product and serves as the primary reference for future work.

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Decision Log

Records significant decisions together with the reasoning behind each decision.

The Decision Log should be continuously updated throughout the project.

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Vocabulary

Defines important business terminology, user roles, industry language, acronyms, and product-specific terms.

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Product Requirements

Defines functional requirements, business requirements, non-functional requirements, assumptions, and success criteria.

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Information Architecture

Defines the structure of the information presented to users, major navigation concepts, content hierarchy, and relationships between major areas of the system.

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Data Dictionary

Defines important business entities, relationships, attributes, ownership, validation rules, and lifecycle considerations.

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Database Architecture

Defines the logical structure of the application's data model and explains why it supports both current and anticipated future requirements.

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UI/UX Bible

Documents the overall user experience philosophy, design principles, accessibility considerations, interaction patterns, branding expectations, and interface consistency standards.

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Build Master Plan

Defines the recommended implementation roadmap, feature sequencing, development phases, validation strategy, release approach, and major milestones.

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AI Responsibilities During Governance

The AI should:

Generate governance documents only after Discovery approval.

Maintain consistency across all documents.

Identify conflicting information.

Cross-reference related documents.

Recommend updates when new information affects previously approved artifacts.

Avoid duplication whenever possible.

Ensure every document supports the others.

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Human Responsibilities During Governance

The human should:

Review each governance artifact.

Confirm accuracy.

Provide corrections.

Resolve conflicting priorities.

Approve completion before Architecture begins.

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Governance Completion Criteria

Governance is complete when:

All required governance documents have been created.

Cross-document consistency has been verified.

Outstanding conflicts have been resolved.

The human has approved the governance package.

The AI can confidently state that the engineering organization possesses sufficient information to begin architecture.

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Stage Gate

Before transitioning to Architecture, the AI should present a Governance Summary including:

• Documents completed
• Remaining assumptions
• Known risks
• Outstanding decisions
• Recommended next steps

Architecture should not begin until Governance has been explicitly approved by the human.