Wakalix/Guides/A decision for engineering leaders

Spec-driven development at team ten.

Spec-driven development works, which is why it spreads. By the tenth team, the same habits have produced ten versions of themselves.

A six-minute readFor engineering leadersJump to the exercise ↓

The situation

Ten teams, ten versions of one good idea.

Spec-driven development earns its place. A team writes the spec, the agent works to it, the review checks against it. The work gets better, and everyone can see why.

So it spreads. By team ten, every team writes specs its own way, keeps its own prompt library, and reads the organisation's rules a little differently. Ask two leads what "reviewed" means and you get two answers.

Nothing is broken. Nothing is shared either. That's the part that stops scaling.

The shift

What changes at ten.

Four things move up a level. Each one works fine inside a team and stops working across ten.

The spec
One feature's contractA roadmap the specs hang off

Ten specs don't add up to a plan.

The agents
Prompts on laptopsA catalogue the organisation owns, versioned and pinned

The best prompt in the company shouldn't live on one laptop.

The rules
A paragraph in each specGuardrails outside the model, the same for every team

A rule inside a spec only binds that spec.

Learning
A better spec next timeThe retro changes the agents themselves

A better spec helps once. A better agent helps every time.

The other half

What stays with the teams.

Plenty stays local, and should. Standardising these buys nothing and costs goodwill.

The AI toolThe rhythmAgents a team builds for itselfThe team's own rules

The questions

Five questions to settle before team ten.

Put them to your leads. Any answer that changes by team is a thing that hasn't moved up yet.

  1. Who owns an agent once a second team uses it?

    Agents

    Without an owner, the version that spreads is whichever copy someone found first.

  2. What happens to the rules when they only exist in specs?

    Rules

    A rule written into ten specs is ten rules, each one edit away from drifting.

  3. How does a new team start: from a template, or from someone's laptop?

    Onboarding

    Team eleven inherits whatever is easiest to copy. Decide now what that will be.

  4. What does leadership read across ten teams?

    Visibility

    Ten well-run teams can still leave a quarter with no single answer.

  5. What gets versioned, and who may release it?

    Release

    If agents change without versions, nobody can say what produced last month's work.

Try this on your organisation

Where are you on the curve?

Count the teams using AI today, then tick what they genuinely share. Nothing you type leaves this page.

Your organisation
What they share today

These are example answers. Replace them with yours.

4 teams

This counts what your teams share, not how well they work. Different tools and rhythms are fine, and stay fine.

With Wakalix

The layer the tenth team needs.

Specs perfect one feature. Wakalix runs the system around every feature, and leaves each team its own way of working.

  1. 1
    One roadmapEvery product keeps a ranked roadmap, and every cycle traces back to it.
  2. 2
    Agents the organisation ownsAn agent is defined once, owned by your organisation, released like software and pinned for every team.
  3. 3
    Rules that can't be skippedMost rules are built into how work moves. Only real judgement calls go to the AI.
  4. 4
    Versions tested before releaseEvery version runs its test cases. If it fails, it isn't published, and every retro improves your agents.
Rules
The rules registry: each rule, how it is enforced, and what it costs the model.
Product screen · the rules registry: each rule, and how it is enforced.
Evaluations
An evaluation of an agent version: each skill's cases against the bar, with publishing held until it passes.
Product screen · evaluations: a version that can't pass isn't published.

Teams keep their own tools, agents and rhythm. Leadership sees one roadmap, one set of rules, one record.

Next

Bring your curve to a conversation.

Run the exercise with your leads and note what your teams don't share yet. Then tell us. We'll walk you through the same shift in Wakalix, and what it would take for your teams.

Request accessWhere Wakalix fits