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AI-Native SDLC — Whole-Model View
Thirteen dimensions, five maturity levels each. Hover a cell for its definition; click it (or the popover’s own link) for the transition and full detail.
| Dimension | Nascent | Modeled | Continuous | Integral | Telemetric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1Market discovery & definition | Ad hoc AI use, by preference, no shared method. | Consistent AI method exists, still one function's own. | AI discovery runs continuously now, still function-owned only. | Functions share one AI model, still hand-render it. | AI auto-renders each function's view from one model. |
| D2Buyer & user persona development | Ad hoc AI use, individual preference only, inconsistent. | Consistent AI synthesis exists, but personas ship static. | AI keeps personas live against real usage signal. | Functions consume shared AI persona model, still hand-adapting. | AI auto-generates each function's persona view directly. |
| D3Positioning & competitive intelligence | Ad hoc AI use, no shared method, inconsistent. | Consistent AI monitoring exists, one function's own cadence. | AI competitive monitoring is continuous now, not periodic. | Functions draw on shared AI model, still hand-rendering. | AI auto-generates each function's positioning view directly. |
| D4Requirements management | No AI role; informal tickets, no real structure. | No AI role; shared record, purely human traceability. | No AI role; shared human access to specs. | AI generates code and tests directly from spec. | AI generates both directions, spec to artifact, back. |
| D5Prototyping | No AI governance role; the boundary stays undefined. | AI-assisted prototyping exists; human decides case by case. | Human makes a documented carry-forward call, after building. | Same human criteria now applied while actively building. | Spec, prototype, and test built together; human call near-free. |
| D6Architecture governance | Tribal knowledge only; no AI involvement at all. | Humans write code; humans manually enforce it against docs. | Deterministic tooling, not AI judgment, catches common violations. | Agents apply the encoded rules during their own generation. | Agents propose rule changes; a human architect still approves. |
| D7Test-driven development | Humans write tests only after the code exists. | Humans write tests first, manually translated from the spec. | AI derives tests directly from the spec, repeatably. | AI generates tests as the spec itself is written. | Spec, test, and prototype generation fused, scaling with volume. |
| D8Code verification & review | Only human review exists; there is no automation. | Non-AI gates run first; humans still review everything uniformly. | Humans triage by risk; low-risk clears on automation alone. | An independent AI reviewer performs first-pass review, separately. | The AI reviewer's own accuracy is checked against outcomes. |
| D9Environment management | No environment separation exists; this is entirely manual. | Environments exist but are manually provisioned by a human. | Environments are defined as code; a human still triggers. | A human action triggers on-demand provisioning from templates. | Agents self-provision and tear down within human-set policy. |
| D10Release discipline | Releases are fully human-gated, on a fixed cadence. | Automated gates run; human approval and comms remain manual. | Deploys trigger automatically on passing gates; rollback stays exceptional. | Approval, compliance, and rollback are fully automated, policy-governed. | Live system signals govern expansion or rollback of releases. |
| D11Security & compliance | No containment or identity; agent actions go untracked. | Sandboxed with pre-checks, but no distinct agent identity yet. | Agent actions are now attributable, though still bypassable individually. | Gates mandatory, non-bypassable; agent tooling tracked as risk. | Policy is enforced live; an agent can be halted. |
| D12Instrumentation & observability | Monitoring covers infrastructure only; no AI structuring exists. | AI generation produces some trace, but it goes unretained. | AI traces are retained systematically, diagnosing failure patterns. | AI's own role in runtime decisions is separately traced. | Build, runtime, and production telemetry are all equally visible. |
| D13Feedback loop velocity | No AI role; cycle time is simply unmeasured. | No AI role; humans measure cycle time retrospectively only. | Cycle time is tracked continuously; humans name the bottleneck. | Fixing the bottleneck is funded like ordinary feature work. | AI evidence and fixing compress response time to days. |
A — Nascent B — Modeled C — Continuous D — Integral E — Telemetric⚠ = open review item
Currency basis: short-form cells current at main; full model text pinned at cb6ffd1. These are different bases, so this page can render content from more than one point in its sources' history.