The Six-Stage Loop¶
How to break delivery into explicit stages so quality and risk are managed on purpose.
Why this chapter matters¶
The six-stage loop shows where quality is created and where risk is introduced. Making each stage explicit improves handoffs and governance.
Key points for your team¶
The six-stage model turns a vague delivery idea into a system that teams can inspect and improve. Instead of treating development as one continuous stream, it highlights where decisions are made and where controls should exist.
Attendees can use this as a workshop artifact with engineering and platform teams: map each stage to current tooling and identify where missing artifacts or unclear ownership create avoidable risk.
What to review with your team¶
For team discussion, use this chapter to connect New artifact: spec and New arrow: feedback to spec with your current delivery loop.
In the session context, Six stages. Intent: captured deliberately, not in a Slack thread. Use that framing to align engineering, platform, and governance stakeholders on concrete next steps.
Put this into practice¶
Document your loop from intent to delivery and add one concrete quality gate to each stage.