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Business and vertical principles

Generic Guidelines vs. Business & Vertical Principles

In this engineering framework:

  • Engineering Guidelines (EG-001 – EG-026) are generic processes and mechanisms. They define standard governance, version control rules, pull request workflows, CI/CD pipeline structures, test strategies, and compliance tracking that apply universally regardless of domain.
  • Principles (Architecture, Coding, Development) are specific to a business, product line, or industry vertical (e.g., Automotive Embedded, Medical Devices, Cloud SaaS, High-Frequency Trading, Aerospace).

Key Rule: Principles MUST NOT be hardcoded into generic process guidelines. Instead, each business unit or vertical selects, tailors, or plugs in its domain principles into the generic guideline governance model.

Domain & Vertical Principle Catalogs

Organizations and product teams adopt principle catalogs tailored to their specific domain:

  1. Reference Business Principles Catalogue: Core guiding principles, architecture principles (AP-01 to AP-17), coding principles (CP-01 to CP-20), and lifecycle principles.
  2. Embedded & Real-Time Systems: Prioritizes deterministic timing (AP-12), memory budgets (AP-06), safety containment (AP-10), and hardware isolation (AP-03).
  3. Cloud & Microservices: Prioritizes horizontal scalability, event-driven decoupling (AsyncAPI), zero-downtime releases, and telemetry (EG-020).
  4. Regulated / Medical / Automotive: Prioritizes strict requirement traceability (EG-006), hazard analysis, certification profiles (EG-023), and formal verification.

How Business Principles Integrate with Guidelines

Guideline Governance How Business Principles Integrate
EG-007 Architecture Principles Governance Defines how ADRs cite principles and how CI enforces budget/dependency rules. The business supplies the active principle IDs (e.g., AP-01).
EG-012 Coding Principles Governance Defines how code reviews and static analysis enforce coding rules. The vertical supplies language-specific coding standards (e.g., MISRA, AUTOSAR, PEP8).
EG-008 Decision Records (ADRs) ADRs cite active business principle IDs when recording architectural tradeoffs.