Checklist: Project Start

Product And Scope

[ ] Problem statement written
[ ] Target users and stakeholders identified
[ ] Success criteria include functional and operational outcomes
[ ] Out-of-scope items documented
[ ] Major constraints documented

Architecture And Delivery

[ ] Initial architecture chosen and justified
[ ] First ADRs created
[ ] Environment model defined
[ ] Branch and review strategy defined
[ ] CI baseline agreed
[ ] Rollback ownership defined

Security And Data

[ ] Secret handling approach defined
[ ] Access model for repo and environments defined
[ ] Threat-modeling trigger defined
[ ] Data sensitivity and retention expectations documented
[ ] Vulnerability triage owner identified
[ ] Security and privacy owners identified

Repository Standards

[ ] README.md exists
[ ] CONTRIBUTING.md exists
[ ] SECURITY.md exists
[ ] .gitignore is complete
[ ] Build, lint, test, and local-start scripts exist
[ ] Formatting and lint rules configured

Operational Readiness

[ ] Health-check strategy defined
[ ] Observability baseline defined
[ ] Initial runbook ownership assigned
[ ] Change classification and approval expectations defined
[ ] Incident severity model defined
[ ] Backlog starts with testable acceptance criteria