# Ways of working with Sphere

Sphere changes the shape of a delivery team's day: less steering of tools, more deciding and reviewing. **Sphere Desktop** is that **control plane**: BA, Dev, Architect, and QA meet in a **chat-first** app — Chat is home; Plans, Runs, and Diagram support the same workspace. See `sphere-desktop.md`. Do not picture the day as living inside a diagram builder or the free SCAN whiteboard.

## Roles on one control plane

- **Business analyst / product owner (a person)** states the goal functionally: *what* is needed and why.
- **The architect (a person)** owns the system's direction: architecture, important decisions and what "good" looks like.
- **Developers (people)** review plans and verified results; coding agents execute under Sphere’s direction.
- **QA (people)** rely on acceptance criteria and verification records that travel with the plan.
- **Sphere** works out *how*: plans against the architecture, builds through coding agents, verifies and fixes.

People decide intent and accept outcomes; Sphere handles the mechanics in between — all anchored in the same Architecture-as-Code blueprint.

## The rhythm

1. **Describe the goal functionally.** Say what should change and why, not which files to edit.
2. **Review the plan.** Check intent and which parts of the system it touches; ask Sphere to revise if needed.
3. **Approve and let it run.** Builds don't need watching. Sphere reports when done or when it needs a decision.
4. **Review the checked result.** Look at what changed, what was verified and why. Merge when satisfied.
5. **Let the model learn.** Plan, run and verification records stay with the system model — context for the next change.

## Habits that work well

- Plan, revise, then build — the cheapest place to catch a misunderstanding.
- Write acceptance criteria in plain language; they become the checks.
- Keep the architecture honest when Sphere proposes model updates.
- Start from a prototype: turn an existing app into a production version while cleaning structure.
- Let notifications pull you in rather than watching progress.
- Evaluate ROI with equal-outcome KPIs (tokens, scope, human interactions) — see `roi-and-evaluation.md`.

## A proof point

Sphere is used to build Sphere. The team plans, builds and verifies parts of the platform — including the desktop client — through the same loop customers use.