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Risks & Governance

This document captures the main risks of planning and executing a 1,500-candidate ecosystem and the governance that keeps the catalog trustworthy. It is written for architecture and product leadership.

Top Risks

# Risk Impact Mitigation
1 Service explosion - treating items as microservices Cost, ops burden Classification model, ADR-0011
2 Duplication across verticals Wasted build, drift Platform-first, composition (ADR-0012/0013)
3 Catalog drift from reality Loss of trust Generated from data files; re-run on change
4 Over-planning vs delivery Analysis paralysis Phase 0 is light; delivery follows roadmaps
5 Scope creep in verticals Missed timelines Solution packs compose, not re-implement
6 Compliance gaps in regulated verticals Legal/financial Audit + compliance by default; security blueprints
7 Ownership ambiguity Stalled contexts Each context has an owning team candidate

Governance Controls

  • Decision records. Material choices are captured as ADRs (ADR-0010..0014) and a BDR.
  • Single source of truth. The machine-readable catalog is generated; narrative pages link to it.
  • Change process. Edits go to tools/ecosystem-catalog/data/*.txt and the generator metadata, then regenerate. See the generator README.
  • Architecture Review Board. New standalone-service proposals are reviewed against the microservice justification rule.
  • Roadmap precedence. Timelines remain owned by the roadmaps; this catalog never overrides them.

Open Questions

  • Which Tier 2-3 horizontals should be promoted into Phase 2 alongside the factory?
  • How aggressively should verticals be pre-built as packs vs. delivered on demand?
  • What is the minimum viable governance footprint (category 30) for Phase 1-3?