Handed
Sworn schedules notary signings. A title company sends an order, and a notary must be found, assigned, confirmed, and moved whenever the borrower moves. Trustedpreneurs had been pitching the idea since March 2019, pitched as a platform that would never compete with its own customers. I joined in February 2026: pre-launch, pre-funding, and nothing yet written that a developer could build from.
The requirements lived in two heads, one thinking in deals and one in brand. An offshore vendor built to whatever the last call said, and the first client, BNN Services, waited with its notaries behind it. I knew that client from inside ~ I work there part-time as operations analyst, leading QA and knowledge management ~ so I knew how a signing service runs its day. I came in as product owner.
Decided
When requirements arrive by conversation, the decision is the artifact that lasts. My work was to turn four parties' meetings into one record, and every step ran one way: from a call, to a record, to a specification, to a screen, to a manual, each one something the next party could build from without me in the room.
Decisions, not specs. A living spec says what was true that morning and loses the reason; minutes keep every word and bind no one. So from May every ruling went into a single trail: the problem, the call, who made it, and the meeting where it was made. Most calls belonged to the principals. My part was framing them, getting them made, and keeping them on record.
The bundle, swept. The record became requirements documents in the vendor's own format ~ acceptance criteria, a definition of done, and the business reason under each ~ writing in the principals' bets against the incumbent. In June, seven were due at once. The vendor builds to the last thing it receives, so a spec sent early becomes code before it is right. I kept all seven back for one more pass, which caught two architectural errors in the permissions spec, and sent the bundle the next morning.
Rulings inside the wireframes. On 30 September the executive handed me the open decisions, and I made them inside the wireframes, the first place the design could be clicked through rather than read. Seven of my rulings went into that package. The sharpest was the locator, where a button labelled Start Notary Locator sent an outreach batch and started no search at all. I split the step in two: a search that shows the order's needs, then a pool with three ways forward. The executive had approved that button's name, so I told him before he found it.
The manual as answer key. I started the manual ahead of the test plan, and put it to the executive this way: the brand principal will know when something is wrong for the business, but not what is missing, and only a written account of what should exist can catch an omission. I wrote it for machines first, each page headed by the question a user would type, and rendered it for four readers, each seeing only their part. The model I named to the client was Atlassian's help centre.
Shipped
Before October I wrote ten specifications the vendor builds from ~ the order lifecycle, the locator, notary rating, role permissions and the rest ~ and a change-management protocol, ratified in June, that fixes when the vendor may push changes during testing. On 1 October, against an end-of-business deadline, I shipped the wireframe package: one order's lifecycle as the operator sees it, then as the client, the notary and the consumer do, built in seventeen hours over three days. Each view is one standalone file, because the vendor forwards files unchanged. I wrote twelve test files with 452 assertions, rebuilt by a single command, with a hash for each file in the delivery note, since the team trades files on a messaging app. Four of the manual's fifteen administration sections are written.
Outcome
Sworn has not launched, so the measure is readiness. Before beta testing began, I got the principals to agree on what beta means: internal testing against the manual first, then live clients on a product with almost no defects. Nine gates were accepted, and the vendor will test inside the room rather than after it. Both principals ratified the manual as the answer key that testing runs against, and the brand principal made a case for it I had not: a company that gets bought is asked for exactly this record. My first manual section surfaced 22 gaps, each now with an owner.
Would change
List what my sources cannot record before I claim coverage. I drafted eight testing gates from everything the system does, every permission and every ruling in the trail. In the meeting, the brand principal added a ninth, unprompted: compliance. What a business must satisfy lives in no permission and no ruling. Next time, regulatory, contractual, insurance and retention requirements get named, with an owner, before the gate set is called complete.
Evidence
- The rating specification ~ the operator's and the consumer's ratings, the shared comment, and the rule that keeps its author anonymous.
- The decision trail ~ 388 entries, each tied to the meeting or work session it came from.
- The change-management protocol ~ when the vendor may push, and what testing does when a push arrives mid-session.
- The divergence and gaps registers ~ where the build disagrees with the design, and every open question with its owner.
- The 1 October package and the hashes that prove which copy arrived.
- Each travels on request, with vendor-identifying material removed.
Edges
- Telling the Bees ~ the same instinct on a shorter clock. A team I recruited for six weeks there; a vendor boundary and a record built to outlive the conversation here.
- The build discipline I now run every governed deliverable under, written out of the October package the day it shipped.