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Kickoff: Fast, testable direction

Establish shared, testable direction in days—not months—by converting scope, risks, and success criteria into executable artifacts and decision logs.

Typical challenges in this area:

  • Starting from FHIR resources instead of workflows
  • Unclear success criteria and non-testable requirements
  • Over-scoping the first release
  • Late decisions on canonical/package/version

The Kickoff provide essential capabilities:

Thin-Slice Use-Case First

Prevent profile-first paralysis by starting with a thin slice of a real workflow demonstrable end-to-end.

Key Benefits: - Working skeleton in days - Hidden assumptions surface early - Scope stays honest

Executable Contract Backlog

Make requirements testable using conformance statements + examples + tests, tracked to issues.

Key Benefits: - Less rework - Automated gating - Vendor alignment

Decision Log (ADR) with Reversibility

Capture key decisions as lightweight ADRs with explicit revisit triggers.

Key Benefits: - Fast decisions with rationale - Avoid re-litigation

Implementation Sequence

When implementing kickoff, we recommend this sequence:

  1. Thin-Slice Use-Case First - Capture the first thin slice as a testable workflow.
  2. Executable Contract Backlog - Translate that workflow into a contract and backlog.
  3. Decision Log (ADR) with Reversibility - Make decisions fast and reversible via ADRs.