200apps · how we work · volume iii of v

◑ What We Build

From signed Feature Brief to a story ready to pull. How a witnessed problem becomes Epics, slices, schemas, and stories — without losing the meaning the brief carried.

Read the opening →

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Part One — The Translation

What happens at the boundary. Why every JIRA artifact is a substitution risk.

• The Translation — the brief is signed, what now?
• What substitution looks like — three patterns
• Resolution increases by phase
• The prediction is what makes the chain testable

Part Two — Epics

Naming the activity, not the area. The kickoff that produces shared situational understanding.

• Epics — an Epic is an activity, not an area
• Technical Epics — when the witness is a system
• The Epic kickoff
• What the Epic looks like in JIRA
• The story backbone

Part Three — Design Shaping

Just-in-time, not upfront. Fidelity grows alongside backbones.

• Design Shaping
• Current state first
• Fidelity grows with understanding
• The design system and stories
• How the design file is organised
• How design and technical artifacts cross-reference
• The Product Decision Record

Part Four — Technical Shaping

The system's flow as a parallel discipline to the user's flow. Sequence diagrams, schemas, contracts, ADRs, ilities.

• Technical Shaping
• The sequence diagram — Uri's billing cycle
• Schema decisions are meaning-carrying
• API contracts written before code
• The ADR — choices the code must keep
• The ilities — chosen for this Epic

Part Five — Planning

The story map. The walking skeleton. INVEST as diagnostic. What kanban replaces.

• Planning
• The story map — 2D, releases as horizontal stripes
• The walking skeleton — replaces MoSCoW
• INVEST — the story-shape diagnostic
• Using INVEST against the map — splitting and merging
• What kanban replaces

Part Six — Amigos

Three people, one story, forty-five minutes. Scenario names that travel.

• Amigos — the seeding event for Volume IV
• What the story looks like in JIRA
• The amigos session
• Scenario names travel

Part Seven — Closing

• What just happened
• Resolution, not maximum → continues into Volume IV

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Supplementary

Pre-restructure corpus pages. Kept while their content is absorbed into the source-aligned pages above.

Epic Naming & Kickoff · Story Mapping · Walking Skeleton · Story Writing · Amigos & Gherkin · ADR · Sequence, Schema, API · Ilities Selection · Slicing & Prioritization