Lifecycle RACI & decision rights
Who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed across the phases and gates — and, critically, who may and may not waive a gate. This kills the failure mode agent speed amplifies most: "everyone assumed someone else reviewed it."
Roles: PO (Product Owner), BA, Lead (Senior Dev), Dev (Intermediate), MT (Manual Tester), AT (Auto Tester), plus shared specialists (Sec, DevOps, Data, Design) and SME.
By phase (accountable role in bold)
| Phase | A / R | Consulted | Gate | May waive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Definition | PO, BA | SME, Commercial | Definition of Ready | PO (non-blocking Qs only) |
| Design | Design, PO | Data, Sec, SME | Design Review | Design lead (polish only) |
| Tech selection | Lead | Sec, DevOps | Tech Selection | Lead (on-radar choices) |
| Build | Lead, Dev | MT, AT, Sec | Merge gate | named approver, logged |
| Refinement | Lead, PO | MT, SME | Refinement Exit | PO (defer to Flow-state) |
| Flow-state | Lead | AT, Support | — | — |
| Production | DevOps | Sec, Support | Production Readiness | nobody (security/rollback) |
Never waivable, by anyone
- Domain sign-off at Definition.
- Data-model / security concerns at Design.
- Security-critical findings and rollback verification at Production.
Authorising the irreversible
Every irreversible action names the human who authorises it — that table is the companion to this one. Between them, there is no action whose owner is ambiguous.
This is the v1 lifecycle-level RACI; the shared-specialist engagement modes and SME time budgets are detailed in the operating-model pass (TASKS.md §6).