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Continuous improvement — generic umbrella for incremental polish

need_id: CVN-N014 OP: wp#88 Status: active Created: 2026-04-29 Owner: dococeven Related: ongoing platform polish — generic umbrella for incremental improvements that don't fit a strategic mission

1. Context

The CVNTrade platform has reached a level of maturity where many small frictions, inconsistencies, and quality-of-life gaps accumulate from one mission to the next. They are individually too small to justify a dedicated Need, but collectively they erode operator velocity and trust in the system.

This Need is a generic umbrella for those continuous-improvement Stories — anything that polishes an existing capability without delivering a new strategic outcome.

2. Problem

Without a dedicated home, continuous-improvement work either :

  • gets attached opportunistically to mission Stories (scope creep, blurs gate decisions),
  • or is captured as one-off backlog items that drift and rot (no Epic-level grouping, no priority signal).

3. Impact

  • Operator friction accumulates silently — no visible KPI degrades, but the system feels heavier over time.
  • Process violations creep in (e.g. divergent sources of truth, undocumented invariants) because nobody owns "the polish".

4. KPIs

  • KPI 1: number of open improvement Stories aged > 30 days — target ≤ 5 — measured via OP query on CVN-N014-* Stories with status=open and created_at < (snapshot_time_utc - 30d), snapshot taken at 00:00 UTC
  • KPI 2: throughput of closed improvement Stories per month — target ≥ 3 — measured via OP closure events on CVN-N014-* grouped by UTC calendar month (half-open interval from the 1st of month M at 00:00:00Z inclusive to the 1st of month M+1 at 00:00:00Z exclusive — e.g. April 2026 = [2026-04-01T00:00:00Z, 2026-05-01T00:00:00Z))

5. Constraints

  • ADRs in scope: every relevant ADR per Story (no global binding)
  • Budget: each Story should fit a single sprint (≤ 5 days)
  • Timeline: rolling — no global deadline
  • Traceability (per ADR-69): every implementation activity under CVN-N014-* must map to an OpenProject Story in the active version (current sprint), with a linked GitHub issue and PR. No code lands under this Need without a Story selection.

6. Out of scope

  • Strategic mission work (ML Boost = CVN-N001-EE, Filter tuning + Economic value growth missions = see the F1_buy boost plan and successor missions)
  • Pipeline contract hardening (CVN-N011 already covers reactive hardening from incidents)
  • New product capabilities (live trading evolutions, new asset classes, etc.)

7. Risks

Risk Likelihood Impact Mitigation
Becomes a dumping ground for vague items High Medium Each Story must have a concrete acceptance bar, not "improve X"
Crowds out strategic work Medium Medium Single-WIP rule still applies — operators pick missions first, polish in slack time

8. Stakeholders

  • DRI: dococeven
  • Reviewers: committee (per ADR-68) for any Story touching production paths

Breakdown (updated as epics are created)

  • CVN-N014-EA — FTF engine improvements (first epic)
  • CVN-N014-EB — TBD (e.g. Console UX improvements)
  • CVN-N014-EC — TBD (e.g. Training pipeline ergonomics)

Closure

Filled when status moves to delivered (unlikely for a rolling umbrella — more likely to be retired or split into focused Needs once breakdowns mature).