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 (AI, Sec, DevOps, Data, Design, Agile Coach — AI and the Agile Coach carry no gate row in v1), SME, Commercial and Support.
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) |
| STOP (remediation) | Leadership (Eng + Sec + Test leads sign) | Delivery | STOP Exit — Definition of Stable | nobody (security/deployment-critical) |
| GTM (launch) | Commercial | Support, Product, Leadership (pricing) | GTM Readiness | soft-launch only, named owner |
Never waivable, by anyone
- Domain sign-off at Definition.
- Data-model / security concerns at Design.
- Security-critical findings — at any gate, not only Production.
- 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; engagement modes are detailed in shared-specialist engagement and SME time budgets in SME engagement.