Enterprise SDLC Documentation Template

This repository is a generic, reusable operating system for strict software delivery. It is meant to work across new products, legacy products, startups, enterprise teams, agencies, regulated environments, monoliths, modular monoliths, microservices, mobile apps, AI products, internal tools, and customer-facing platforms.

The goal is simple: every request must move through a complete, documented lifecycle so an engineer, product team, QA team, security team, or AI coding agent cannot silently skip the work that makes software production-ready.

What This Repo Gives You

• A permanent claude.md operating brain for AI-assisted delivery
• A strict SDLC policy with non-skippable gates
• Reusable baseline documents for engineering, QA, security, release, documentation, UAT, and risk
• A full feature template covering phases 00 through 27
• Reusable test-case templates for unit, integration, E2E, security, and business validation
• Generic runbook, ADR, release-note, and support templates

Core Policy

Every request must pass through full business, product, architecture, impact, standards, testing, implementation, QA, security, UAT, risk, documentation, release, hypercare, and retrospective phases with written artifacts and hard gates; no step may be skipped, and no change may ship unless it is reviewed, tested, secure, observable, documented, and operationally reversible.

Recommended Usage

1. Keep claude.md at the repo root. On case-sensitive filesystems, mirror it to CLAUDE.md if your tooling expects the uppercase filename.
2. Treat docs/sdlc/ as the permanent company baseline.
3. Copy docs/features/_template/ to docs/features/<feature-slug>/ for each request.
4. Create or update test-case files under test-cases/ as the request advances.
5. Refuse implementation until phases 00 through 13 are documented.
6. Refuse merge or release until all hard gates are green.

Agent Compatibility

This repo now exposes the policy through tool-compatible files:

• claude.md: canonical long-form source of truth
• AGENTS.md: Codex bootstrap file that tells Codex to read and obey claude.md
• .cursor/rules/*.mdc: active Cursor project rules
• .cursorrules: legacy Cursor compatibility shim
• codex.md and cursor.md: mirror/reference copies for humans or custom tooling

If any compatibility file ever differs from claude.md, claude.md wins.

Repository Layout

/claude.md
/AGENTS.md
/codex.md
/cursor.md
/.cursor/rules/
/.cursorrules

/docs/sdlc/
  company-sdlc-policy.md
  engineering-standards.md
  code-review-checklist.md
  release-checklist.md
  security-baseline.md
  qa-baseline.md
  uat-baseline.md
  risk-baseline.md
  documentation-baseline.md
  public-reference-points.md

/docs/features/_template/
  00-intake.md
  01-business-analysis.md
  02-business-development.md
  03-product-requirements.md
  04-cross-functional-refinement.md
  05-delivery-plan.md
  06-technical-refinement.md
  07-technical-roadmap.md
  08-architecture-review.md
  09-impact-analysis.md
  10-engineering-standards-check.md
  11-test-strategy.md
  12-coverage-plan.md
  13-implementation-readiness.md
  15-dev-validation-report.md
  16-dev-bug-log.md
  17-qa-report.md
  18-defect-cycle-log.md
  19-threat-model.md
  19-security-review.md
  19-pentest-report.md
  20-uat-report.md
  21-client-approval.md
  22-go-no-go.md
  23-documentation-changelog.md
  24-risk-compliance-ops.md
  25-release-report.md
  26-hypercare-report.md
  27-retrospective.md
  27-postmortem.md

/test-cases/
  unit/
  integration/
  e2e/
  security/
  business/

/runbooks/
/architecture/adrs/
/release-notes/
/support/

Design Notes

• The process is strict by design.
• Depth can scale with request size; phase existence cannot.
• Coverage is measured on touched modules, not just global repository averages.
• Hotfixes move faster, but they still produce artifacts and still pass gates.
• This repo is intentionally generic so it can be adapted to any company or architecture.
• On Windows and other case-insensitive filesystems, claude.md is the canonical file. On case-sensitive filesystems, teams may optionally mirror it to CLAUDE.md for tool compatibility.

Start Here

• Read claude.md
• If you use Codex, keep AGENTS.md in the repo root
• If you use Cursor, keep .cursor/rules/*.mdc under version control
• Read docs/sdlc/company-sdlc-policy.md
• Read docs/sdlc/public-reference-points.md
• Copy docs/features/_template/ for the first request you want to run through the system