The First Week of an NEE Project

The purpose of this document is to:

• Organize content in the playbook for quick reference and discoverability
• Provide content in a logical structure which reflects the engineering process
• Extensible hierarchy to allow teams to share deep subject-matter expertise

The first week of an Neudesic Engineering Project

Before Starting the Project

• Discuss and start writing the Team Agreements. Update these documents with any process decisions made throughout the project
  • Working Agreement
  • Definition of Ready
  • Definition of Done
  • Estimation
• Set up the repository/repositories
  • Decide on repository structure/s
  • Add README.md, LICENSE, CONTRIBUTING.md, .gitignore, etc
• Build a Product Backlog
  • Set up a project in your chosen project management tool (ex. Azure DevOps)
  • INVEST in good User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
  • Non-Functional Requirements Guidance

Day 1

• Plan the first sprint
  • Agree on a sprint goal, and how to measure the sprint progress
  • Determine team capacity
  • Assign user stories to the sprint and split user stories into tasks
  • Set up Work in Progress (WIP) limits
• Decide on test frameworks and discuss test strategies
  • Discuss the purpose and goals of tests and how to measure test coverage
  • Agree on how to separate unit tests from integration, load and smoke tests
  • Design the first test cases
• Decide on branch naming
• Discuss security needs and verify that secrets are kept out of source control

Day 2

• Set up Source Control
  • Agree on best practices for commits
  • Set up basic Continuous Integration with linters and automated tests
  • Set up meetings for Daily Stand-ups and decide on a Process Lead
  • Discuss purpose, goals, participants and facilitation guidance
  • Discuss timing, and how to run an efficient stand-up
• If the project has sub-teams, set up a Scrum of Scrums

Day 3

• Agree on code style and on how to assign Pull Requests
• Set up Build Validation for Pull Requests (2 reviewers, linters, automated tests) and agree on Definition of Done
• Agree on a Code Merging strategy and update the CONTRIBUTING.md
• Agree on logging and observability frameworks and strategies

Day 4

• Set up Continuous Deployment
  • Determine what environments are appropriate for this solution
  • For each environment discuss purpose, when deployment should trigger, pre-deployment approvers, sing-off for promotion.
• Decide on a versioning strategy
• Agree on how to Design a feature and conduct a Design Review

Day 5

• Conduct a Sprint Demo
• Conduct a Retrospective
  • Determine required participants, how to capture input (tools) and outcome
  • Set a timeline, and discuss facilitation, meeting structure etc.
• Refine the Backlog
  • Determine required participants
  • Update the Definition of Ready
  • Update estimates, and the Estimation document
• Submit Engineering Feedback for issues encountered

---

Last update: April 14, 2025