record-a-work-decision

name	record-a-work-decision
category	write
description	Preserve a work decision with context, evidence, authority, rationale, consequences, and revisit conditions. Use when future operators need to understand why a choice was made.

record-a-work-decision

Create a durable decision record, not a defense of the winner. Preserve uncertainty and rejected options so later teams can reason from the original context.

Procedure

1. Name the decision, owner, date, status, effective scope, and people or systems affected.
2. State the problem, constraints, deadline, and what happens if no decision is made.
3. Link the evidence and distinguish verified facts, forecasts, assumptions, and preferences.
4. List serious options, including maintaining the current state, with material benefits, costs, risks, and reversibility.
5. Record the selected option, decision authority, rationale, and why the alternatives were not chosen.
6. Capture dissent, unresolved uncertainty, risk acceptance, dependencies, and downstream obligations.
7. Define implementation owner, success measures, monitoring, rollback or exit path, and review trigger.
8. Share the record with affected owners and update superseded documents.
9. When revisited, append the new state and link a replacement rather than rewriting history.

Failure plan

• Do not fabricate consensus or erase dissent.
• Never include secrets or unnecessary protected personal information.
• If the decision exceeds the stated authority, keep it proposed until authorized.
• Separate a temporary exception from a permanent standard.

Done

• Context, options, evidence, authority, rationale, and consequences are recorded
• Implementation, monitoring, rollback, and revisit conditions are verified with owners
• Superseded status and later decisions remain traceable