The Method — Overview
The BMAD method is a way to build software with AI agents that keeps you in control without making you the bottleneck. It replaces "prompt-rolling" — poking an AI until something useful falls out — with a repeatable pipeline: four phases, a team of agents, and a trail of artifacts that carry context from one step to the next.
This page is the map. Each phase below has its own detailed page; start here to see how they connect.
The shape of the method
The golden thread is artifacts. Analysis produces a brief; the brief feeds the PRD; the PRD (plus UX) feeds the architecture; the architecture feeds epics and stories; each story feeds the code. Nothing is re-derived from memory — the context is written down and handed forward.
The four phases
1 · Analysis — understand the problem
Before you decide what to build, understand the problem, the market, and the domain. You brainstorm, research, and crystallize the idea into a product brief (or stress-test it with a PRFAQ). Led by Mary, the Analyst. → Read the Analysis page
2 · Planning — decide what to build
Turn understanding into a testable plan. John the PM writes the PRD — the product requirements, framed around Jobs-to-be-Done. When there's a UI, Sally the UX Designer adds the UX design. → Read the Planning page
3 · Solutioning — decide how to build it
Winston the Architect lays down the architecture spine — the lean set of invariants everything else must respect — then breaks the plan into epics and stories and runs a readiness check so nothing is missing before you build. → Read the Solutioning page
4 · Implementation — build it, story by story
Plan the sprint, then run the story cycle: create a story, develop it, review it, repeat. Amelia the Engineer builds; Murat the Test Architect guards quality. At the end of each epic, a retrospective captures what you learned. → Read the Implementation page · Quality & testing
The story cycle — the beating heart
Most of your time is spent in Phase 4, looping the story cycle. Each story moves through five phases, and in BMAD Board each phase is a click that launches the matching agent command:
| Phase | Icon | What happens | Command |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backlog | ○ | Create the story spec | /bmad-create-story |
| Ready | ◐ | Start developing | /bmad-dev-story |
| In Progress | ◑ | Continue development | /bmad-dev-story |
| Review | ◕ | Run code review | /bmad-code-review |
| Done | ● | Story complete | — |
Development and review loop: if code review turns up issues, the story goes back to development until it's right. Then you move to the next story — and when the epic is done, you run the retrospective and the epic-level quality gate.
Note: BMAD Board tracks stories by these phases, not by kanban lane columns. A story is always in exactly one phase, and advancing it is a single action. See Epics & stories.
Where the artifacts live
| Phase | Produces | Lives in |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis | Brief / PRFAQ, research | _bmad-output/planning-artifacts/ |
| Planning | PRD, UX design | _bmad-output/planning-artifacts/ |
| Solutioning | Architecture, ADRs, epics & stories | _bmad-output/planning-artifacts/ |
| Implementation | Story specs, sprint-status.yaml | _bmad-output/implementation-artifacts/ |
| Quality | Test plans, gate decisions | _bmad-output/test-artifacts/ |
You browse and edit all of them in the Documents view.
Do I have to do every phase?
No. The method scales to the work:
- Greenfield, ambitious project? Run all four phases in order.
- Brownfield or a small change? Go lighter — a quick spine and a couple of stories may be enough. The architecture step even ratifies an existing codebase instead of designing from scratch.
- Just need one thing built? BMAD offers a unified
/bmad-quick-devpath that clarifies, plans, implements, and reviews in one workflow.
The discipline is the same at every size: understand, plan, structure, build — and write down what you decide.
Next steps
- Meet the team that drives it → The agents
- Start at the beginning → Phase 1 · Analysis
- Or jump into the board → Your first project