Serious games (SGs) integrate pedagogical design with game development. Yet, current practices often rely on abstract frameworks that rarely provide production-ready artefacts, and static Game Design Documents (GDDs) that soon become outdated and clash with Agile workflows. As a result, teams adopt ad hoc processes and fragmented documentation, causing drift between design and implementation, increased rework, and limited traceability from learning objectives to gameplay. It also limits timely input from subject-matter experts (SMEs) and industry stakeholders, undermining instructional alignment and compliance assurance. This paper introduces HLDD-STRIDES, a two-layer framework addressing these challenges: a High-Level Design Document (HLDD) that captures core instructional intent and compliance anchors, and a STRIDES table that expresses instructional steps in a structured, runtime-aligned format. This combination enables SME authoring, rapid CSV re-import, and optional LMS integration (SCORM/xAPI). Deployed in six projects across mining, healthcare and creative sectors, HLDD-STRIDES illustrates how data-oriented documentation can link pedagogy to production while supporting Agile development in SG contexts.