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v0.5.0 - the first release whose feature exists because the maintainer wanted it

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@jprisant jprisant released this 03 Sep 18:58
· 27 commits to main since this release
v0.5.0
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title: "product-lifecycle-templates v0.5.0"
description: "The first template built because the maintainer wanted it, an epic bundle whose own research argues against the easy version of the document, and a counter that had quietly assumed this release would never happen"
audience: both
level: beginner
doc_type: release-notes
size: lean
owner: "product-on-purpose"
status: published
doc_version: "0.5.0"
created: "2026-09-03"
updated: "2026-09-03"
related_links:

  • ../../CHANGELOG.md
  • ../../STATE.md
  • ../../templates/epic/
  • ../internal/decisions/0042-epic-joins-delivery-docs.md
  • ../internal/decisions/0041-maintainer-preference-sets-the-build-order.md
    source_template: release-notes
    source_template_version: 0.1.1

product-lifecycle-templates v0.5.0

Summary

The library has a 27th bundle, epic, and it is the first one built because the maintainer wanted it rather than because a plan said so. Two decision records made that possible: ADR 0041 made the maintainer's own preference set the build order, and ADR 0042 admitted epic to the delivery-docs family after the first attempt to build it stopped on a gate neither record had removed.

The bundle's research is the part worth reading, because it argues against the easy version of the document it ships. The 2020 Scrum Guide contains zero occurrences of the word "epic", confirmed by literal string search rather than by summary. XP substitutes a splitting rule, the Kanban Method has no product-sized work unit at all, and LeSS Huge partitions one flat backlog instead. Only SAFe formalizes the artifact. In its native habitat an epic is a tracker record, not a document, and the bundle says so on its own catalog card rather than overselling itself.

Nothing here changes an existing template, a meta field, or the bundle contract. Upgrading is safe.

The honest caveat, unchanged since the library existed: no one outside this repository has filled one of these templates yet. 27 bundles is a bigger library, not a used one, and evals/usage-log/ still holds only its README. Template quality was measured on three bundles in August and returned VOID all three times, which means the instrument discriminates and the question is still open.

New

  • The epic bundle (templates/epic/), eight files, two variants. Lean carries the five things a tracker's own fields cannot: what the work is and who it serves, the larger effort it ladders up to, its boundaries, the stories it splits into, and the bar for calling it done. Full adds Out of Scope, Dependencies with a named owner on both sides, and a Link Upward section that refuses to pretend the tier above an epic has a settled name.
  • A scored quality rubric for epics, eight rows on a 0/1/2 scale with a variant scope table. The library is now 16 scored-table and 11 checklist guides across 27.
  • A queued build backlog that is actually used. atlas/state-overrides.json shipped a queued block in August and never held an entry. epic was the first, and the file now records the full round trip, including the part nobody had written down: an entry is removed when its build lands.

Improved

  • plt-grade-doc can grade one more document type, and one more of the types it grades now supplies its own scored scale rather than borrowing the grader's.
  • The delivery-docs family contract states its own membership correctly at 0.1.3, with epic placed in the chain sentence between the artifact that opens the chain and the stories that decompose it. Its header also stopped claiming to be version 0.1.1 while its change note documented 0.1.2.

Fixed

  • The Tier-1 floor count was about to start lying. tools/check-counts.py computed the floor as "every built bundle except rfc", a hardcoded exception that was correct only while rfc was the single Tier-2 bundle in existence. epic was the second, so the counter folded it into the floor and reported it as 26 of 27 with 1 remaining. The floor is 25 of 27, with two types refused on the record. Tier now comes from the catalog's own derived data, which CI already gates for freshness.
  • The templates/ folder inventory was missing the new bundle, caught by the Standard's conformance gate rather than by any check in this repository.
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