How to Take a Raw Epic and Turn It into a Governed, Production-Ready Plan

How to Take a Raw Epic and Turn It into a Governed, Production-Ready Plan

(A Practical, Repeatable Method Any Company Can Use)

Most enterprise initiatives fail for a simple reason:

Everyone starts building before anyone actually agrees on what’s being built.

What I’m about to describe is a real, end-to-end method we used to take a raw, vaguely defined epic and turn it into:

• A production-ready delivery plan

• A clean architectural boundary

• A future roadmap

• Machine-readable governance guardrails

• And continuous drift detection built into CI/CD

This is not theory.

It’s not Agile theater.

It’s not consulting fluff.

It’s a practical, repeatable system any company can apply to any epic or any repository.

Step 1 — Start With the Customer’s Raw Epic (Even Though It’s Wrong)

Every engagement starts the same way.

A stakeholder or customer brings you an epic that sounds like this:

“We need a cloud-agnostic integration platform that supports async and sync APIs, dynamic routing, multiple backends, persistence, dashboards, and future scalability.”

In other words:

they tell you what they think they want.

At this stage, the epic is always:

• Over-scoped

• Under-specified

• Politically shaped

• Technically dangerous

• Operationally unrealistic

And that’s normal.

This epic is just raw intent, not a build plan.

Step 2 — The Reality Check Refinement Session

This is the most important step and the one almost nobody does properly.

You sit down with stakeholders and ask uncomfortable but necessary questions:

• What already exists today?

• What’s already deployed?

• What’s actually broken?

• What must be delivered to Production this quarter?

• What is genuinely future-state platform work?

• What would blow up delivery if we tried to do everything at once?

This is where fantasy gets separated from physics.

In our case, the reality was:

• We already had multiple microservices running in Dev

• They already worked in an asynchronous “post office” model

• They were not hardened

• They had weak logging and testing

• They were not production-ready

• And they were absolutely not a new platform yet

So we split the epic into two truths:

Truth #1 — Near-Term Delivery

Harden what already exists and get it safely into Production.

Truth #2 — Future Evolution

Design a future hybrid async/sync platform, but don’t build it yet.

That single separation saved months of chaos.

Step 3 — Refine the Epic Into a Real, Winnable Scope

We rewrote the epic so it now meant this:

• Harden existing microservices

• Add production-grade logging

• Add correlation IDs

• Add integration and contract testing

• Promote Dev → UAT → Prod

• Create a rollout and cutover plan

At the same time:

• Produce a formal architecture

• Produce a future roadmap

• Define async vs sync policy

• Define external system boundaries

Design-only. No new runtime. No new platform.

Now the epic became:

• Deliverable in ~10 weeks

• Safe

• Valuable

• Politically defensible

• Operationally sane

Step 4 — Use AI as a Thinking Partner, Not a Code Generator

This is where AI actually adds value.

We ran multiple AI passes to:

• Stress-test the scope

• Identify hidden architectural bombs

• Surface delivery risks

• Clarify async vs sync implications

• Normalize acceptance criteria

• Translate vague language into operational reality

This wasn’t “generate code.”

It was:

• Architecture review

• Scope sanity checking

• Risk modeling

• Delivery sequencing

AI acted like a brutally honest senior architect in the room.

Step 5 — Get Management Alignment on the Refined Epic

This is the political inflection point.

We showed management:

• What the customer thought they wanted

• What was actually safe to deliver

• What would go to Production now

• What would be designed only

• What would become a new epic later

The key outcome:

Management agreed to the refined epic.

That agreement is critical.

Because everything after this point is now anchored to a shared truth.

Step 6 — Freeze Intent as Machine-Readable Guardrails

This is where everything changes.

We created a full set of intent files for the epic:

• Epic intent

• Scope guardrails

• Delivery intent

• Logging intent

• Testing intent

• Environment intent

• Rollout intent

• Design intent

• External systems intent

• Async/sync policy intent

• Governance enforcement intent

These files define:

• What must happen

• What must not happen

• What is delivery vs design

• What async rules apply

• What logging is mandatory

• What testing is mandatory

• What the AI is allowed to block vs only report

This becomes the record of truth.

Not a wiki.

Not a slide deck.

Not someone’s memory.

Actual versioned, enforceable intent.

Step 7 — Create Stories and the Implementation Plan

Only now do you create stories.

Why?

Because now:

• Scope is frozen

• Architecture boundaries are explicit

• Delivery rules are explicit

• Async/sync policy is explicit

• Logging and testing are non-negotiable

Now your stories can’t silently drift.

Step 8 — Install the Governance Agent in CI/CD

This is the governance breakthrough.

We installed an AI-based governance agent into the CI/CD pipeline to:

• Compare repo reality vs intent files

• Detect architectural drift

• Flag violations

• Classify findings as:

  
  

  • WARN (must fix)

  • REPORT (informational)

• 
  

The agent now acts as:

An architectural conscience embedded in the pipeline.

Not a gatekeeper.

Not a bureaucracy engine.

A quiet guardrail.

Step 9 — Run Drift Analysis Continuously

Now every change is evaluated against intent:

• Did we add sync calls?

• Did we add new runtime components?

• Did we skip tests?

• Did we remove correlation IDs?

• Did we add business logic beyond scope?

• Did we violate environment rules?

Nothing drifts silently anymore.

Step 10 — Budgeting and Staffing Become Rational

Here’s the hidden superpower.

When management went into budgeting:

This epic was no longer:

• A vague platform dream

• A political compromise

• A guessing game

It was now:

• A scoped delivery plan

• With explicit design work

• With explicit non-goals

• With staffing clarity

• With a known blast radius

This turned budgeting into engineering math instead of theater.

What This Process Actually Is

This is not Agile.

This is not Waterfall.

This is not SAFe.

This is:

Intent-Driven Delivery with Embedded Governance.

It combines:

• Human negotiation

• Architecture discipline

• AI-assisted reasoning

• Machine-readable intent

• Pipeline enforcement

• Continuous drift detection

Why This Is a Low-Cost, High-Impact Governance Model

Here’s the honest business reality.

For a few thousand dollars per engagement, a company gets:

• Epic refinement facilitation

• Architecture sanity checking

• AI-assisted scope modeling

• Intent file generation

• Governance agent installation

• Drift detection in CI/CD

• Repo-level enforcement

• A repeatable delivery method

That is absurdly cheap compared to:

• One failed quarter

• One botched platform rewrite

• One production meltdown

• One runaway integration project

Final Thought

This is the first time I’ve seen:

• Architecture

• Delivery

• Governance

• AI

• CI/CD

• And human negotiation

come together into one coherent, operational system.

This isn’t theory anymore.

We just ran it end-to-end.

And it worked.

If You Want to Try This in Your Own Company

This method works for:

• Any epic

• Any microservices repo

• Any modernization effort

• Any integration project

• Any platform rewrite

It doesn’t require a new framework.

It doesn’t require a re-org.

It doesn’t require a six-month transformation.

It requires:

• Discipline

• Explicit intent

• One governance agent

• And the willingness to slow down for one week to go fast for three months.