Overview
Hallmark is a delivery practice — it defines a principled process through which work of any size is delivered, standards are met, and what is claimed of the result is proven.
What the practice covers
| It states | Written on |
|---|---|
| The four principles everything traces to | Principles |
| The difference between the practice and an application of it | Practice and application |
| Who may act, and what each position carries | The parties |
| What travels, and what it must satisfy | Work |
| How work advances, act by act | The process |
| What a system must declare to run it | Applying it |
The system
The system is the thing being built, and the boundary the practice is declared within. A system names the personas it serves, declares the standards it holds itself to, and is where all work lands.
A system is not a repository, a codebase or a deployment. Those are how one happens to be arranged, and they belong to the application — a system may span several of any of them, and the practice is unchanged. Distinguish it from an initiative: the system is the boundary, an initiative is work travelling through it.
This site is the practice
It holds the normative text, and it is what an actor reads in order to act. It is not an application, and it describes none.
Because it is the practice, the rules it states bind the pages stating them. A page that defines a term another page owns is the same defect as a system holding two copies of a standard.