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Governance Overview

FCC includes a built-in governance framework that ensures documentation quality, compliance, and traceability without requiring deep technical knowledge to understand. This page explains what governance means in FCC and how it works for team leads and stakeholders.

Quality Gates

Quality gates are automated checkpoints that verify documentation artifacts meet defined standards before they can move to the next phase or be published.

How Quality Gates Work

Each quality gate has:

  • An ID (e.g., QG-RC-001) that uniquely identifies the gate
  • A persona it applies to (e.g., RC for Research Crafter)
  • A threshold (0.0 to 1.0) that defines the minimum pass score
  • A list of checks that must be satisfied

When a persona produces an artifact, the framework evaluates it against the persona's quality gates. If the checks pass at or above the threshold, the artifact proceeds. If not, the artifact is flagged for remediation.

Severity Levels

Validation results use four severity levels:

Severity Meaning Action Required
Error Critical failure -- artifact cannot proceed Must fix before moving forward
Warning Significant issue -- should be addressed Fix before publication, may proceed in draft
Info Minor observation -- consider addressing Optional improvement
Critical System-level failure -- blocks all progress Immediate attention required

Example Quality Gates

Gate ID Name Persona What It Checks
QG-RC-001 Research Inventory Completeness RC Capability matrix, annotated references, traceability matrix, capability tags
QG-BC-001 Blueprint Completeness BC Architecture diagrams, API specifications, data models, workflow definitions
QG-DE-001 Documentation Quality DE Style guide compliance, version control, review report
QG-AMS-001 Anti-fact Mitigation Rigor AMS Confidence thresholds applied, source verification, audit trail

The framework includes 25 quality gates covering all 24 personas plus one universal gate (QG-RISCEAR-001) that validates R.I.S.C.E.A.R. completeness across all personas.

Capability Tags

Tags categorize every persona and capability using a three-level hierarchy:

supercategory / category / capability

For example:

  • strategy-alignment / knowledge-sharing / persona-research-crafter
  • operational-excellence / integration-automation / persona-blueprint-validator
  • strategy-alignment / governance-compliance / governance-quality-gates

Tags serve three purposes:

  1. Discovery -- Find personas and capabilities by category
  2. Reporting -- Aggregate metrics by supercategory or category
  3. Compliance -- Verify all required capabilities are covered

The tag registry (data/governance/tag_registry.yaml) contains 30 tags organized across five categories: knowledge-sharing, integration-automation, governance-compliance, stakeholder-engagement, and champion-orchestration.

Governance Personas

Three personas are specifically designed for governance functions:

DGS -- Data Governance Specialist

Manages integration between documentation systems and data governance ecosystems. Ensures API contracts, data flows, and service configurations align with governance policies. Operates across all FCC phases.

Key outputs: Integration configurations, data flow documentation, compliance reports.

PTE -- Privacy Taxonomy Engineer

Designs data classification taxonomies aligned with privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.). Implements hierarchical classification schemes with defined sensitivity levels.

Key outputs: Classification taxonomies, privacy policy documentation, classification reports.

AMS -- Anti-fact Mitigation Specialist

Ensures AI-generated content is factually grounded. Validates claims against authoritative sources using confidence thresholds:

Confidence Level Range Action
High >= 0.95 Auto-accept with audit log
Medium 0.80 - 0.94 Requires manual review
Low 0.60 - 0.79 Requires source citation
Reject < 0.60 Rejected, flagged for rewrite

Key outputs: Validated content with confidence scores, confidence reports, audit trails.

How Governance Flows Through FCC

Governance is not a separate step -- it is embedded in the FCC cycle:

  1. Find phase: DGS provides governance context, STE ensures terminology consistency, TS tracks traceability
  2. Create phase: PTE classifies data sensitivity, BC and RB produce governance-compliant artifacts
  3. Critique phase: AMS validates factual accuracy, BV checks blueprint quality, GCA audits overall compliance
  4. Publication: SCP enforces access controls, CO coordinates handoffs, quality gates block non-compliant content

Next Steps