10 commandments for feature and product build

Product and implementation design

1. Thou shalt research global products and user research insights, marry it with your gut feel on design
2. Thou shalt complete product design journeys and look at the end to end flow design – vision will be shared with the entire build team
3. Thou shalt surface all engineering dependencies and document APIs needed and system flow interaction on paper. Mock contracts will be shared with the front end and QA before the building starts. This includes DE, DSL, and BE

Feature Build

1. The backend will release only with the documentation for all APIs planned. Any contract changes will be signed off on JIRA with an ack from QA and frontend
2. QA will ensure functional and scalability QA for all backend APIs released. Only then will the front end pick anything up for final integration
3. The front end will ensure measurability, pixel perfection, and SEO sanity. Design owners will own pixel perfection UAT and plug-in gaps in design journeys if any in agile mode

Release Management

1. We own our failures and our wins. And we will declare them as such. Team huddles on release date -2 to talk about pending dependencies and plan for anything required. 
2. All owners have to exhibit the total cost of ownership on the complete release for creating student value. Feature releases will be called out for any dependencies in real-time
3. Environment provisioning to be owned and designed by Devops ahead of time. 
4. IN-PERSON coordination by leadership for high agile coordination and trade-offs. Nominees can stand in for rest.