Startup playbook

Can we start the POC?

Defines the public shape of the "Can we start the POC?" stage. The website should explain the decision, the intent and the related guidance without publishing the full assessment method.

Useful for

Production readiness

Public purpose

Curation guidance

Open with the point that the POC can be throwaway, but the habits around it should not be.

Use the control introductions to explain why source control, pull request boundaries, reproducible deployment, architecture memory, throwaway infrastructure and lightweight governance matter before shared product infrastructure appears.

Summary intent

The team should be able to build and demo quickly without losing decisions, leaking secrets, writing PII to logs, depending on local-only deployments or letting the POC become Production by accident.

How Brokenhouse helps

Turn this into a practical plan.

I help technology teams turn this guidance into decisions, implementation plans, governance evidence and production-ready operating models.

Talk through your situation

Next guidance

Related decisions to work through

Container platform decisions

Use containers as the default packaging stance. They give the product a flexible route from POC to Pilot to Production without forcing the final hosting decision too early.

Stage gates

Stage gates are decision points. They help a company decide whether it is ready to move to the next level of customer exposure, operational risk and commercial promise. They are not ceremonies and they are not a replacement for judgement.