Designed-Then-Built
A development mode where the design is fully resolved before the first line of code is committed, producing large initial commits and minimal post-initial structural change. Contrasts with scaffold-then-accrete.
A development mode where the design is fully resolved before the first line of code is committed, producing large initial commits and minimal post-initial structural change. Contrasts with scaffold-then-accrete.
Designed-then-built describes a development approach where architecture, data models, and user flows are fully resolved before implementation begins. The resulting codebase appears in a single large initial commit rather than through a series of scaffolding passes.
The diagnostic signal is commit shape: a first commit measured in thousands of lines that contains testable behavior, not a skeleton. This contrasts with scaffold-then-accrete, where a small initial commit grows through iterative feature additions.
The failure mode of designed-then-built is scope rigidity: the clean initial structure resists change because the design was resolved as a unit. For bounded tools with well-understood requirements, this is often an acceptable tradeoff for velocity. For open-ended systems where requirements shift, scaffold-then-accrete is more resilient.