Discover. A short, intense pass over the business, the users, the systems already running, and the constraints that are not negotiable. The output is a problem definition precise enough to architect against.
Architect. System design, data and context model, integration surface, model strategy where AI is involved, and the build versus buy calls. Trade-offs are written down, including what we recommend not building.
Prototype. A working prototype against real data and real systems, not a slide. For AI work this is where evals and failure modes surface, while changing direction is still cheap.
Engineer. The full system: application, services, agents and their harness, integrations, data pipelines, and the infrastructure underneath. Built composable, so parts can change without a rewrite.
Deploy. CI/CD, infrastructure as code, staged rollout, observability and guardrails live before traffic is. Production readiness is a gate, not a follow-up ticket.
Operate. Monitoring, evals, incident response, cost and performance tuning, and the next iteration. Systems that include AI need this more than conventional software, not less.