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SME engagement

The most leverage-rich people artefact in RAPID — SME knowledge is the input the whole engine runs on. Get this wrong and the agents build fast, confident and wrong.

The method​

  • Structured elicitation — Event Storming and Example Mapping to get rules and edge cases out of an expert's head and into a domain brief.
  • Captured in agent-consumable form — decision tables, worked examples, glossary — not meeting notes. What an agent can load is what counts.
  • A validation slot every iteration — the SME checks each turn, so drift is caught in a day, not at the end.
  • Bounded weekly time budgets — SME access is neither a bottleneck nor absent; a predictable, protected commitment.
  • UAT chapter — scenario scripts auto-derived from acceptance criteria, co-owned with Test.

What SME sign-off means at each gate​

SME sign-off is recorded at Definition of Ready (rules correct), Design Review (flows reflect reality), and where flagged in review (domain correctness of a change). It's an explicit, recorded act — not an assumption.

Why it's the crux​

Agents are domain-blind until told. The quality ceiling of a RAPID product is set by how well SME knowledge was captured and how often it validates the build. This playbook protects that channel.

Standards referenced: Event Storming, Example Mapping.