spec-driven-development

Spec-driven development defines the problem, context, and acceptance criteria upfront before coding. This spec-first workflow reduces software drift and rework by ensuring teams fully specify features and align them with project governance prior to implementation.

You create a feature specification by drafting the initial spec, refining it for constitution alignment, and validating acceptance criteria. This planning workflow produces traceable FR, NFR, and SC documentation along with TDD-aligned guidance for implementation.

Yes, you can derive tests and acceptance criteria directly from specifications to drive implementation. This TDD-aligned planning approach ensures the generated tasks and tests traceably validate the functional and non-functional requirements defined in the spec.

Yes, spec-driven development applies directly to product development cycles across teams. It enables constitution alignment, specification refinement, and task generation to ensure distributed teams build features based on fully specified and governed project principles.

The best way to maintain traceable requirements is using a spec-first methodology to generate FR, NFR, and SC documentation. This ensures specification artifacts are validated against project governance before any implementation tasks are generated.

You should avoid spec-first development when rapid prototyping is needed without upfront constraints or when a project lacks defined governance principles. The methodology requires dedicated time for constitution alignment and specification refinement before generating implementation tasks.