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05. Assignment 16 — Engineering Principles Pack

Companion files: - 02_explainer.md - 03_study_material.md - 06_revision.md

Goal

Produce a reusable engineering-principles pack that proves you can think like a Lead AI Engineer. This is not a motivational essay. This is the decision framework you would hand to a team before building the next serious AI feature.

Scenario

You are the new Lead AI Engineer on a team shipping an AI feature into an already-busy product. The team has talent, pressure, and partial clarity. Your job is to set the course, define the compass, keep the crew aligned, run the weather checks, and maintain the ship's log.

Required deliverables

Create a folder or document set containing the following:

1. Decision memo

Write a 1200-2000 word memo for one real or realistic AI feature. It must cover: - Problem and desired outcome. - Constraints: speed, privacy, accuracy, cost, compliance. - Options considered. - Chosen path and why. - What would make you revisit the decision.

2. Two ADRs

Write two ADRs. Choose from examples like: - API vs self-hosted model. - RAG vs fine-tune. - Single-agent vs workflow orchestration. - Manual approval vs autonomous action.

Each ADR must include: - Context. - Options considered. - Decision. - Consequences. - Trigger to revisit.

3. Quality plan

Split quality into three layers: - Unit tests — deterministic glue. - Evals — model behavior. - Monitoring — production health.

List at least: - 5 unit tests. - 5 eval cases or metrics. - 8 monitoring signals.

4. Risk matrix

Create a risk matrix for the chosen feature. Minimum dimensions: - User harm. - Compliance/privacy. - Cost blow-up. - Reliability/latency. - Reputation.

For each risk, include: - Probability. - Severity. - Detection signal. - Mitigation. - Rollback or fallback.

5. Manual-to-automation roadmap

Describe the feature in three stages: 1. Manual or human-reviewed. 2. Semi-automatic with guardrails. 3. More automated with stronger observability.

Explain what evidence allows movement from one stage to the next.

6. Stakeholder translation brief

Write one page translating the same technical choice for: - Product. - Legal/compliance. - Finance. - Executive leadership.

Output format

Use any format you like, but make it reviewable. A simple structure is:

  1. README.md
  2. decision_memo.md
  3. adr_api_vs_self_host.md
  4. adr_rag_vs_finetune.md
  5. quality_plan.md
  6. risk_matrix.md
  7. automation_roadmap.md
  8. stakeholder_brief.md

Success criteria

Your pack is strong if a senior engineer could use it tomorrow without guessing your intent. It should be: - Opinionated, not vague. - Context-aware, not generic. - Honest about uncertainty. - Explicit about reversibility. - Strong on failure handling, not only happy paths. - Cross-linked to 02_explainer.md ideas and 03_study_material.md frameworks.

Common failure modes

  • Turning the memo into empty leadership language.
  • Writing ADRs with no alternatives or revisit triggers.
  • Treating evals as optional after unit tests.
  • Automating too early because it looks impressive.
  • Ignoring cost and operational burden.
  • Explaining the same decision identically to every audience.

Stretch version

If you want to go beyond the minimum, add: - A rollout plan with canary stages. - A postmortem template. - An error-budget policy. - A sample incident runbook.

Why this matters

Module 17 is about production infrastructure. This hands_on_lab ensures you know what that infrastructure should enforce. Without principles, MLOps becomes tooling theater. With principles, MLOps becomes leverage.