The Boundary
Everything up to UAT is yours to control. What happens after is not.
The brief was specific: streamline the build through to UAT, which is your environment. That is the right place to stop. Client acceptance, their change windows and their sign-off sit outside your control and should not be automated away.
Releases stay on request. A client asks and it ships, or a circular lands with a date. We are not proposing a fortnightly train — your customers are broker desks with real deadlines, and “it is in the release after next” loses you work. What changes is that every release is assembled the same way instead of from scratch.
| Part of a release | Today | Under this model | Changed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Client request or circular, on demand | Client request or circular, on demand | — |
| What is in it | Worked out in conversation | Comes from the approved change map | ✓ |
| Test evidence | Whatever was run, reported verbally | Suite results attached, gate enforced | ✓ |
| Release notes | Hand-written, shape varies | Assembled in a fixed format | ✓ |
| Migration scripts | Sent separately, run by hand | Part of the pack, applied by the pipeline | ✓ |
| Rollback plan | Known to whoever deployed it | Part of the pack, reviewed before UAT | ✓ |
| Deploy to UAT | Partly manual, partly habit | One pipeline, one button | ✓ |
| UAT sign-off | Human, with a name | Human, with a name | — |
The Pipeline
Five stages, each catching something the next one cannot
Commit to UAT, and what each stage catches
Stage 1 is the cheapest big win in the whole plan
Tests exist. Nothing gates on them. So their signal is optional, and optional signals get ignored. Turning on an enforced gate costs a configuration change plus holding the line for two weeks. Expect the first week to be annoying — builds break for reasons unrelated to the change in hand. That is the accumulated cost of the tests having been optional, paid at once. It settles fast.
Four Kinds of Release, One Assembly Process
Different triggers and one extra gate each. The pipeline is the same.
| Kind | Trigger | Extra gate |
|---|---|---|
| Client feature | A client asks for something new | Product Owner confirms scope and criteria at intake |
| Product feature | Roadmap work on the core product | API contract verdict — anyone consuming the surface gets told before, not after |
| Regulatory | SEBI or exchange circular, or a regulatory rule change | Compliance sign-off, and the deadline tracked from the day the circular lands |
| Defect fix | Found internally or reported by a client | QA confirms severity and validity before it enters the queue |
Regulatory releases get the most obvious benefit
A circular arrives with a date attached and no negotiating room. Today it triggers a scramble: work out what it means, find which modules implement that area, estimate. The Regulatory Watch Agent does the first two in an afternoon, so the estimate is grounded and the deadline conversation happens on day one instead of week two.
What the UAT Pack Contains
Assembled by the agent, reviewed by the release manager, read by the tester
What changed
- Summary in plain language, not a commit list
- The requirement it traces back to
- Regulatory reference where there is one
- What was explicitly left out of scope
What to test
- Checklist derived from the acceptance criteria
- Which automated tests already cover which criterion
- What the automation cannot cover, flagged for a human
- Test data or setup the tester needs
Known limitations
- Defects found during the work and deliberately deferred
- Anything the Domain Owner ruled on
- Performance notes where a hot path was touched
- Nothing hidden for the tester to discover
How to undo it
- Rollback steps, written before deployment not after
- The down migration, tested
- Config changes that need reverting too
- Drilled quarterly so it is known to work
Target: answer “how soon?” with a number
By the end of Stage 4 you should be able to answer a client's question from the change class rather than from a feeling. That is a commercial capability as much as an engineering one, and it is the outcome your clients see most directly.