Specification · Chapter 6 of 8

Lifecycle Model

Note

Chapter 6 of the v1.0 reading path, carried verbatim from docs/Specification/ in the canonical repository. This page is one chapter of the normative specification, published on its own URL for reading and citation by chapter; the one-page edition carries all eight chapters and the citation metadata. Each concept is defined in full in the granular documents (Core Vocabulary and Models); this reading path cites them and never replaces them.

Lifecycle Model SPEC-06

Draft v1.0 docs/Specification/06 Lifecycle Model.md

Purpose

This chapter defines how Entities change over time. It sits between the structural Object Model (Chapter 5) and the sections outside the Core chapters (1 to 8) that apply the Core to concrete scenarios: docs/Domains/, docs/Entities/, docs/Lifecycles/, docs/Examples/, docs/Workflows/ and docs/Reference Architecture/, which the Committee Review of 22 July 2026 called Reference Material. Each of those carries its own Status field, Draft (normative) or Informative, per Governance/Documentation-Standards.md. Lifecycle itself is normative; specific lifecycle patterns (Commercial, Financial, Operational, ...) are illustrations of it.

Definition

A Lifecycle is the complete set of States and permitted State Transitions that define the operational existence of an Entity. Every Entity shall have exactly one Lifecycle. A Lifecycle is a reusable operational model describing the allowed States and valid State Transitions of an Entity; it defines how an Entity evolves over time while preserving operational consistency.

Editorial note (18 September 2026). The source documents diverge on Lifecycle cardinality. Models/Lifecycle.md requires every Lifecycle to "belong to exactly one Entity"; Lifecycles/Lifecycles.md requires every Lifecycle to "be reusable by multiple Entities" and states that "Multiple Entities may share the same Lifecycle". This chapter states the Entity-side rule, that every Entity shall have exactly one Lifecycle, and the reuse sentence; it does not resolve the divergence, which is recorded as AO-028. No requirement changed.

States

A Lifecycle shall define one and only one initial State, and may define one or more terminal States; a terminal State represents the completion or permanent termination of the Entity Lifecycle. Each State shall have a unique meaning within the Lifecycle. At any point in time an Entity shall occupy exactly one valid State defined by its Lifecycle.

Transitions

A Transition defines movement from one State to another. Transitions shall be explicitly defined; undefined transitions are invalid. A Lifecycle shall not contain multiple initial States, contain unreachable States, contain undefined Transitions, or permit ambiguous State progression.

Lifecycle Ownership

Every Entity shall belong to exactly one primary Domain, and the Domain governs ownership, responsibility, and operational rules (Models/Entity.md). A Domain's responsibilities include ensuring lifecycle governance, and primary governance shall not be shared between Domains (Models/Domain.md).

Events and Lifecycle

An Event is an immutable record describing something that has occurred within the operational model; Events do not define behavior (Models/Event.md). A State does not define how transitions occur; transitions are defined by the Entity Lifecycle (Models/State.md). Which transitions are valid is therefore the Lifecycle's role alone.

Relationship to Domain-Specific Lifecycle Patterns

This chapter defines Lifecycle as a primitive. The specification's Reference Material demonstrates typical lifecycle patterns for recurring business scenarios — for example, a Commercial Lifecycle or a Campaign Lifecycle with states such as Draft, Approved, Active, Completed, Suspended, or Cancelled. Those patterns apply this chapter's rules; they do not extend or modify them.

Conformance

A Lifecycle conforms to this specification only if all mandatory requirements defined in Models/Lifecycle.md are satisfied, among them that no State it defines is unreachable and that no Transition is undefined.

Revision History

Version Date Description
0.2 22 July 2026 Compiled reading path, approved by the Architecture Committee with editorial changes (Specification/Committee Review Package.md).
0.2 22 July 2026 Committee Review: added an inline definition of "Reference Material" at first use, per committee direction; no source document changed.
1.0 17 September 2026 "shall never", inherited verbatim from Models/Domain.md, normalized to "shall not" as the Committee Review of 22 July 2026 directed for Chapter 5; no requirement changed. Purpose no longer calls the Domains, Entities and Lifecycles sections non-normative (their Status fields decide, per Documentation-Standards.md); Definition, States, Transitions and Conformance restated from Models/Lifecycle.md, Models/State.md and Lifecycles/Lifecycles.md ("shall never" normalized to "shall not" as Chapter 5 did on 22 July 2026); Lifecycle Ownership now compiles Models/Entity.md and Models/Domain.md instead of an unsourced rule, and Events and Lifecycle compiles Models/Event.md and Models/State.md; Source line extended accordingly.
1.0 18 September 2026 Editorial note added under Definition recording the Lifecycle cardinality divergence between Models/Lifecycle.md and Lifecycles/Lifecycles.md, as AO-028 recommends; no requirement changed.

Source: compiled from Models/Lifecycle.md, Models/State.md, Lifecycles/Lifecycles.md, Models/Entity.md, Models/Domain.md, Models/Event.md. Domain-specific lifecycle patterns (Commercial, Financial, Operational, Organizational, Content) remain in docs/Lifecycles/ as Reference Material, per the Part I / Part II separation established for v0.2. (Committee Review, 22 July 2026: added an inline definition of "Reference Material" at first use, per committee direction; no source document changed.) (17 September 2026: recompiled as v1.0 against the canonical documents as of this date; see Revision History)