How work flows

Software has a life. This part is the spine of the handbook — not a bag of skills. Phases use industry-standard names so we aren’t inventing a private taxonomy.

Discover → Deliver → Operate → Maintain → Retire

flowchart LR
  D[Discover] --> Del[Deliver]
  Del --> O[Operate]
  O --> M[Maintain]
  M --> R[Retire]
  O -.->|feedback| D
  M -.->|new bets| D

Phase	Question	Start here
Discover	What should we learn before (and while) building?	Continuous discovery, fidelity, spec altitude
Deliver	How do we build, integrate, and put it into service?	Merge / stage / ship; open Architecture when bets are unclear
Operate	How do we keep it alive and learn from production?	Ops, observability, feedback
Maintain	How do we change it without boiling the ocean?	Refactor, update, simplify, buy/vendor/OSS, LLM-era cost
Retire	How do we leave without losing the lessons?	Deprecate, transition, archive

When shape, language, framework, or placement is undecided, stop coding theater and open Architecture.

Grounding (canonical cousins)

Handbook phase	Authoritative cousins
Discover	Continuous discovery / dual-track; ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 stakeholder needs & requirements
Deliver	DevOps Develop + Deliver; 12207 implementation, integration, V&V; ITIL Transition into service
Operate	12207 / ITIL Operation; SRE / observability
Maintain	12207 Maintenance; continual improvement; buy-vs-build
Retire	12207 Disposal + Transition (cutover); archive / ADR so knowledge survives

Full bibliography: Sources.