(Élan reference structure and artefacts: https://github.com/nnworkspace/elan)
Élan is a demonstrative workbench for governing complex, high-risk, high-stakes projects through automation.
It shows how governance rules, specifications, code, tests, automation machinery, and reports can be organised as one logically coherent and traceable system, even when artefacts live in different repositories, registries, or environments.
What Élan is
- A Markdown-first, Git-based workbench for institutional-grade projects
- A reference structure for governance-to-production traceability
- A demonstration of governance as executable constraint, not static documentation
- A model for active governance, where rules are enforced, analysed, and evidenced by automation
Élan is not a product to install.
It is a worked example you can study, adapt, or fork.
What problems Élan addresses
Élan is designed for environments where failure is costly and ambiguity is dangerous:
- governance rules that exist only as prose and cannot be enforced,
- specifications that drift away from implementation over time,
- audits that depend on reconstruction, trust, and manual effort,
- project coordination driven by meetings rather than mechanisms,
- delivery speed that increases operational and legal risk instead of reducing it.
In such systems, velocity without discipline produces fragility and exhaustion.
How Élan differs from conventional approaches
Unlike traditional project tools and methodologies, Élan:
- treats governance artefacts as technical inputs, not background documentation,
- embeds traceability directly into specifications, code, tests, and reports,
- separates logical unity from physical co-location (many repos, one system),
- uses automation broadly — validation, analysis, enforcement, reporting — not only CI/CD,
- treats CI/CD as one enforcement mechanism among many, not the centre of the system,
- favours explicit, machine-checkable constraints over informal process and ritual.
Coordination is achieved by structure and mechanical enforcement, not ceremony.
Who Élan is for
Élan is especially relevant for:
- public institutions and regulated environments,
- organisations with complex vendor and stakeholder landscapes,
- projects with high legal, financial, or operational risk profiles,
- senior engineers and architects responsible for long-term durability,
- executives who need confidence grounded in evidence, not dashboards.
It can also benefit mid-sized projects whose risk profile, rather than scale alone, demands rigour.
In short:
Élan is about disciplined momentum — enabling systems to move continuously, without forgetting why they move at all.
References
- Élan reference structure and artefacts: https://github.com/nnworkspace/elan
- Élan intent and philosophy: https://code-and-civilisation.vercel.app/posts/elan-an-introduction