Sources & grounding
Authoritative, current references that ground this handbook’s practices (TTPs), skills, and lifecycle/architecture narrative. Prefer primary docs and research over blogs. Update this page when house defaults or industry baselines change.
Software lifecycle & service operation
Section titled “Software lifecycle & service operation”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207:2017 overview (IEEE) | Canonical software life cycle processes: requirements, implementation, operation, maintenance, disposal, transition |
| ITIL — IT service management | Transition into service, operation, continual improvement vocabulary |
| Microsoft Learn — DevOps / ALM | Plan → Develop → Deliver → Operate beat |
| How work flows (handbook) | House phases: Discover → Deliver → Operate → Maintain → Retire |
Discovery, fidelity & MVP
Section titled “Discovery, fidelity & MVP”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Alberto Savoia — Pretotype It | Pretotyping vs prototyping; falsify interest early |
| Teresa Torres — Continuous Discovery Habits | Dual-track discovery; opportunity framing |
| Eric Ries — Lean Startup (MVP) | Build–measure–learn; thinnest real product to learn |
| Discover (handbook) | Fidelity ladder + spec altitude |
Architecture, placement & buy-vs-build
Section titled “Architecture, placement & buy-vs-build”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Martin Fowler — Strangler Fig Application | Incremental replace / retire patterns |
| Architecture Decision Records | Archive decisions so wheels aren’t reinvented |
| Architecture (handbook) · What runs where | Shape, language, framework, placement, hosts |
| Maintain (handbook) | Refactor vs buy/vendor/OSS; LLM-era cost asymmetry |
Delivery performance & batch size
Section titled “Delivery performance & batch size”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| DORA — Trunk-based development | Short-lived branches, merge frequency, CI as enabler |
| DORA capabilities overview | Continuous integration/delivery, small batches, test automation |
| Accelerate / State of DevOps research | Deployment frequency, lead time, change fail rate, restore time |
Version control & GitHub collaboration
Section titled “Version control & GitHub collaboration”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| GitHub Docs — Protected branches | Required checks, reviews, merge gates |
| GitHub Docs — About pull requests | PR as review unit |
| GitHub Docs — Issues | Tracked work, linking PRs |
Testing & evidence
Section titled “Testing & evidence”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Martin Fowler — Practical Test Pyramid | Layered tests, Given/When/Then, avoid ice-cream cone |
| Software Engineering at Google — Testing | Narrow tests first; ~80/15/5 guideline; productivity + confidence |
| Google Testing Blog — Test behaviors, not methods | Behavior-focused tests |
| Cucumber — Given/When/Then | BDD scenario shape for acceptance evidence |
| Dan North — Introducing BDD | Behaviour = acceptance criteria; GWT vocabulary |
| Dan North — What’s in a Story? | Outside-in stories + scenarios as done |
| Martin Fowler — GivenWhenThen | GWT as specification-by-example structure |
| Quality regimes (handbook) | Which evidence closes which kind of system |
| Quality trace (handbook) | DocSlime + lightweight BDD end-to-end |
Quality by system shape (regimes)
Section titled “Quality by system shape (regimes)”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Google SRE — Service level objectives | Correctness as an SLI; pick few meaningful objectives |
| Google SRE Workbook — Implementing SLOs | Pipeline freshness, coverage, correctness SLIs |
| Google SRE Workbook — Data processing | Golden data / correctness for pipelines |
| Great Expectations docs | Expectations as executable data-quality tests |
| web.dev — Web Vitals | LCP / INP / CLS as product UX quality |
| Google Search — Core Web Vitals | Field UX thresholds for sites |
| W3C — WCAG | Accessibility as product quality bar |
| Anthropic — Demystifying evals for AI agents | Datasets, layered graders, living eval suites |
| Anthropic — Building effective agents | Measure before adding agent complexity |
| Langfuse — Observability & evaluation | House-default LLM traces, datasets, scores (OTel-friendly) |
| OpenTelemetry docs | Vendor-neutral traces for services and LLM spans |
Design simplicity & refactoring
Section titled “Design simplicity & refactoring”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Beck Design Rules | Pass tests → reveal intent → no duplication → fewer elements |
| Martin Fowler — Refactoring | Small behavior-preserving steps; tests as safety net |
| Gall’s Law | Working complex systems evolve from working simple ones |
| XP Simple Design | Simplicity as prioritized rules, not vibes |
Observability & incidents
Section titled “Observability & incidents”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Google SRE — Four golden signals | Latency, traffic, errors, saturation |
| OpenTelemetry docs | Vendor-neutral metrics/logs/traces |
| Google SRE — Incident management | Roles, communication, blameless learning |
| Google SRE Workbook — Canarying | Progressive exposure before full rollout |
Shipping & progressive delivery
Section titled “Shipping & progressive delivery”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Google SRE — Reliable product launches | Feature flags, gradual rollout |
| CNCF / progressive delivery patterns | Canary, blue-green, staged promote (when applicable) |
CI/CD security & secrets
Section titled “CI/CD security & secrets”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| GitHub Docs — OIDC for Actions | Short-lived cloud auth; no long-lived keys |
| GitHub Blog — Supply chain security | Pin actions, trusted publishing, reduce secret sprawl |
| OWASP DevSecOps — CI/CD training | Secrets hygiene, OIDC, least privilege |
| SLSA | Build provenance levels |
| Pulumi ESC + GitHub Actions | House default for secrets/config injection |
Architecture & monorepos
Section titled “Architecture & monorepos”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| DORA — Loosely coupled architecture | Independent deployability |
| Google Eng Practices — Code review | Small CLs, ownership, reviewability |
| Trunk Based Development | Monorepo + short-lived branches patterns |
Agents & AI-assisted development
Section titled “Agents & AI-assisted development”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications | Prompt injection, excessive agency, sensitive info |
| NIST AI RMF | Govern/map/measure/manage AI risk |
| Anthropic — Building effective agents | Simple composable patterns; avoid unnecessary swarms |
| Anthropic — Demystifying evals for AI agents | Task suites, code vs LLM vs human graders |
| OpenAI — Agents guide | Tool use, handoffs, guardrails (vendor-current) |
| Langfuse docs | House default for generative observability + eval workflows |
Bugs, debt & experience failures
Section titled “Bugs, debt & experience failures”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Everything’s a bug (or an issue) | Cultural root: BugSplat / bug council — docs, UX, perf, features, defects in one list |
| Martin Fowler — Technical Debt | Debt as interest on incomplete alignment / cruft |
| Martin Fowler — Technical Debt Quadrant | Prudent/reckless × deliberate/inadvertent |
| Ward Explains Debt Metaphor | Primary Cunningham explanation |
| Jeff Atwood — Bug vs feature request | User-seat: can’t-do-the-thing is the same pain |
| Google SRE — Eliminating toil | Infra/ops experience debt (toil) |
| Bugs & debt (handbook) | House taxonomy: data, development, framing, feedback, docs, … |
Product docs & DX (companions)
Section titled “Product docs & DX (companions)”| Source | Use for |
|---|---|
| Diátaxis | Tutorials / how-to / reference / explanation |
| Write the Docs | Docs as product |
| DocSlime | Product docs lifecycle; REQUIREMENTS/TESTING quality trace |
| ProductFeeling / Impeccable handbooks | Feeling north star and UI craft |
| Quality trace (handbook) | How DocSlime + BDD connect quality and documentation |
How practices use these sources
Section titled “How practices use these sources”Each practice includes a Why it works paragraph tied to the mechanisms above and a Further reading list (2–4 links). Skills remain the executable playbooks; this page is the shared bibliography.