EXEMPLAR
HomeSolutions

Agent Development Lifecycle

ADLC

ADLC is the Agent Development Lifecycle — the analog of SDLC for production agents. Framework, model, evals, and governance on a repeatable path: scope the job, build in your environment, gate with evals, put policy in front of execution, then operate and hand the playbook to the next team.

What this solution covers

  • Framework — Choose the runtime that fits the job — LangGraph, CrewAI, ADK, or custom. The framework is a deliberate decision, made for this workload, not a default from last quarter’s demo.
  • Model — Pick and route models for quality, latency, and cost. Enablement includes why this model, and when to change it without rebuilding the path.
  • Evals — Regression gates on the path to production. Prompt and skill changes do not ship on hope — the team learns to run the suite every time the agent moves.
  • Governance — Policy before bash, path, deploy, or data access. Allow, ask, or deny. Material actions stay attributable and interruptible.

How the lifecycle runs

The same loop Applied installs in your environment.

  1. Step 1

    Scope

    Which agents, which framework, which model, which actions are actually risky. A path the org can reuse for the next team.

  2. Step 2

    Enable

    Framework, model, evals, and governance in place for the first production path. Your team runs it with us.

  3. Step 3

    Production

    Governed executions with evals and audit. Fix what breaks. Repeat until the path is boring.

  4. Step 4

    Scale

    Handoff with a playbook. The next team follows the same ADLC without waiting on a strategy deck.

Examples

Illustrative — ADLC in a live enterprise environment.

First production path

Marketing wants an agent that drafts campaign copy against approved brand tools. ADLC starts at framework and model, puts evals on tone and claims, and requires ask before anything publishes.

Model change without a rewrite

A provider deprecates the model you launched on. The lifecycle already has evals and a routing decision — swap the model, re-run the suite, keep the same policy gate.

The next team can follow

Fintech copies the playbook retail just finished. Same stages, different tools. ADLC is the repeating unit, not a one-off engagement artifact.

Applied by Exemplar installs this lifecycle in 8–12 weeks. When the work is shipping software at volume, see Software Factory.

Schedule a briefing →