But I think the coordination problem is subtler than version control implies. In the (plan, design, code) pipeline they aren't collaborating on the same artifact. They're producing different artifacts that are all expressions of the same intent in different spaces: a plan in natural language, a design in a structured spec, code in a formal language.
Different artifacts which are different projections in different Chomsky levels but all from the same thing: user intent.
The coordination challenge is keeping these consistent with each other as each stage transforms the prior projection into the new one. That's where the gates earn their place: they verify that each transformation preserves the intent from the previous stage.
But I think the coordination problem is subtler than version control implies. In the (plan, design, code) pipeline they aren't collaborating on the same artifact. They're producing different artifacts that are all expressions of the same intent in different spaces: a plan in natural language, a design in a structured spec, code in a formal language.
Different artifacts which are different projections in different Chomsky levels but all from the same thing: user intent.
The coordination challenge is keeping these consistent with each other as each stage transforms the prior projection into the new one. That's where the gates earn their place: they verify that each transformation preserves the intent from the previous stage.