Adoption & Evolution · master area
Practice Sequencing
Once the minimum is holding, layer the practices. The order matters — each one assumes the previous is in place. Skipping ahead is allowed if the team is ready. Skipping the chain's spine — prediction and check — is not.
Owners: PO, Tech Lead Phase it lives in: After We Build (Volume V) The corpus principle this enacts: Each cycle's small wins compound.
Where it lives in the chain
The sequence
| Order | Practice | Why this one next |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prediction + check | The chain's spine. Without this, nothing else updates. |
| 2 | Feature Brief (one sheet) | Where the prediction lives so it doesn't drift. |
| 3 | Amigos before code | The smallest unit of shared meaning between phases. |
| 4 | Retrospective with one change | Compounding rather than listing. |
| 5 | Model update | Where the cycle's learning becomes the next cycle's starting point. |
| 6 | ADRs for constrained choices | The technical-side artefact that survives the developer leaving. |
| 7 | The full Discovery walk | Five stations. Vision through Decision. |
| 8 | Postmortem with chain levels | The structural-fix discipline. |
| 9 | Portfolio review with VRI | The view above the cycle. |
| 10 | The full corpus | Everything else, gradually. |
How to do this
Add a practice when the team notices the gap the next one would fill — not when someone says it's time.
- After three cycles of prediction-check, the team notices that "the prediction kept drifting in conversation between cycles." That's the cue for the brief.
- After a cycle where two production bugs traced to
scenario-gap, the team notices "we should have caught those in advance." That's the cue for amigos. - After two retros that produced lists nobody implemented, the team notices "we keep talking about the same things." That's the cue for one change, owned, dated, testable.
What good practice looks like
The team's adoption is not a roadmap with dates. It's a noticing loop: run the current chain, see where the gaps surface, layer the next practice in. Trying to install all five volumes in one quarter produces ceremony. Layering them over a year produces instinct. The compounding does not wait for everything to be in place — it begins the moment the first prediction is written and checked.
Related crafts
- Minimum Viable Chain — the entry point
- Chain Maturity Assessment — where the team is
- Resistance — what slows adoption and what each form means