From 2de34af5d5cdf647dee06ea92fc96b857f1d1432 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Kevin Marville <116537485+Kvnbbg@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Wed, 27 May 2026 22:04:41 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Add QEA phased iteration plan with KPI gates

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 artifacts/governance/qea-iteration-plan.md | 149 +++++++++++++++++++++
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+# QEA Iteration Plan: MVP → Hardening → Scale
+
+This document translates the validated “simple base, progressive complexity” approach into an executable modernization loop focused on user-cycle fluidity.
+
+## Operating Principle
+
+- Start from the smallest stable slice.
+- Increase complexity only after objective technical validation.
+- Optimize for smooth user loops (time-to-value, perceived latency, task completion).
+- Re-calibrate daily using derived metrics.
+
+## Program Cadence
+
+- **Sprint rhythm**: 1-week execution, daily checkpoint.
+- **Daily cycle**: Observe → Diagnose → Adjust → Verify.
+- **Gate policy**: No progression if quality, security, or reliability gates fail.
+
+---
+
+## Level 1 — MVP Stabilization (Ground State)
+
+### Objective
+
+Establish a reliable baseline of core flows with measurable UX and operational health.
+
+### Scope
+
+- Critical flows: navigation, contact submission, chat interaction.
+- Baseline observability: frontend errors, API latency, request success/failure.
+- Basic security hygiene: secret handling, dependency audit, minimal hardening checks.
+
+### KPIs (Go/No-Go)
+
+- Availability of core API path: **>= 99.0%** (daily).
+- p95 client-visible action latency (core flows): **<= 1500 ms**.
+- Contact/chat request success rate: **>= 98%**.
+- Frontend uncaught error rate: **< 0.5% sessions**.
+- Critical vulnerabilities open: **0**.
+
+### Deliverables
+
+- KPI dashboard definition and owners.
+- Alert thresholds for core regressions.
+- Baseline incident runbook for top 3 failure modes.
+
+### Exit Criteria
+
+All Level 1 KPIs sustained for 5 consecutive business days.
+
+---
+
+## Level 2 — Hardening & Performance Optimization
+
+### Objective
+
+Reduce risk and improve responsiveness under normal and burst usage.
+
+### Scope
+
+- Reliability hardening: retries, timeout strategy, error boundaries, graceful fallbacks.
+- Performance optimization: bundle strategy, caching posture, API hot-path profiling.
+- Security reinforcement: branch protections, secrets rotation workflow, dependency governance.
+
+### KPIs (Go/No-Go)
+
+- p95 core interaction latency improvement vs Level 1 baseline: **>= 25%**.
+- p99 API timeout rate: **<= 1%**.
+- Change failure rate (deployment): **< 10%**.
+- Mean time to restore (MTTR): **< 60 minutes**.
+- High-severity vulnerabilities open for >7 days: **0**.
+
+### Deliverables
+
+- Hardened timeout/retry matrix by endpoint class.
+- Dependency update policy + weekly enforcement job.
+- Performance budget with automated CI check.
+
+### Exit Criteria
+
+KPIs met for 2 release cycles with no Sev-1 incident.
+
+---
+
+## Level 3 — Scale, Intelligence, and Product Expansion
+
+### Objective
+
+Support growth while preserving UX fluidity, safety, and engineering velocity.
+
+### Scope
+
+- Capacity strategy: horizontal scaling assumptions and traffic envelopes.
+- Quality-at-speed: canary/gradual rollout and auto-rollback triggers.
+- Product intelligence loop: experiment framework with user-centric outcome tracking.
+
+### KPIs (Go/No-Go)
+
+- Weekly active user growth supported with no latency regression at p95 > 10%.
+- Deployment frequency: **>= 3/week** without reliability KPI degradation.
+- Experiment velocity: **>= 2 validated experiments/month**.
+- User task completion uplift on targeted flows: **>= 15%**.
+
+### Deliverables
+
+- Scale playbook with SLO and error budget policy.
+- Progressive delivery policy (canary + rollback guardrails).
+- Experiment registry linking product hypotheses to technical levers.
+
+### Exit Criteria
+
+Three consecutive months of KPI compliance with sustainable team velocity.
+
+---
+
+## Derived Metrics Layer (Daily Adjustment Engine)
+
+Derived metrics convert raw telemetry into decisions:
+
+- **Cycle Fluidity Index (CFI)** = weighted score of task completion, p95 latency, and error-free sessions.
+- **Reliability Pressure Score (RPS)** = incident count, timeout rate, and alert noise composite.
+- **Security Drift Index (SDI)** = unresolved vulnerability age + secrets rotation freshness.
+- **Delivery Stability Index (DSI)** = deployment frequency × (1 - change failure rate).
+
+### Daily Decision Rules
+
+- If **CFI drops > 10% day-over-day**, freeze feature expansion and prioritize UX/latency recovery.
+- If **RPS exceeds threshold for 2 days**, trigger hardening mini-sprint.
+- If **SDI breaches policy**, enforce release gate until security debt is reduced.
+- If **DSI declines while demand increases**, prioritize platform and CI/CD reliability work.
+
+---
+
+## Ownership Matrix
+
+- **Product Owner**: defines user outcomes and acceptance thresholds.
+- **Engineering Lead**: owns technical gates and roadmap sequencing.
+- **SRE/Platform**: owns observability, SLOs, incident readiness.
+- **Security Lead**: owns vulnerability/SBOM/secrets governance.
+
+## First 10-Day Activation Checklist
+
+1. Confirm 3 critical user journeys and instrumentation coverage.
+2. Lock Level 1 KPI thresholds and dashboard implementation.
+3. Add CI checks for lint/test/build + dependency audit.
+4. Define alert routing and on-call escalation rules.
+5. Publish risk register with top interdependency bottlenecks.
+6. Run one synthetic load pulse and one incident simulation.
+7. Review daily derived metrics and apply at least one tuning action.
+