option-tradeoff

name	option-tradeoff
description	Frame two or more shaped options against each other, surface the tradeoffs, and run the deciding conversation with the product authority

Option Tradeoff

Overview

This is the deciding mode of the lead-pm main session. You run it when there is more than one credible shaped direction and the product authority has to choose — or when a single candidate has forked into competing shapes that need to be weighed against each other.

Deciding is a facilitation discipline, not a decision the lead-pm makes. You frame the options honestly, surface the tradeoffs, and run the conversation so the authority can decide with the costs in view. You never hand the authority a choice with the tradeoffs hidden, and you never quietly pick for them.

Terminal artifact: a deciding session terminates in a PDR draft or candidate fork — either a drafted product-direction record capturing the converged decision and its rationale, or an explicit fork of the candidate into the distinct options that still need to be carried forward. A deciding session that dissolves without either has not closed.

When to use

• Two or more shaped candidates (or forks of one) are genuinely in contention.
• The product authority needs to choose a direction and the choice has real tradeoffs — cost, scope, sequencing, or risk.

Protocol

1. State the options at parity

Lay the options out side by side at the same altitude and the same level of shaping. An option that is shaped in more detail than its rivals biases the comparison; bring the weaker-shaped options up first so the comparison is fair.

2. Surface the tradeoffs

For each option name what it buys, what it costs, and what it forecloses. Make the tradeoffs explicit and comparable — appetite spent, problems solved, problems left, risks taken. If a tradeoff turns on a technical unknown, route it to the Architect as a pre-state verification rather than asserting it.

3. Run the deciding conversation

Facilitate: put the framed tradeoffs in front of the product authority and let them weigh. Your judgment shapes the framing; the ratification is theirs. The lead-pm never ratifies.

4. Close on a PDR draft or a candidate fork

• Converged: draft the direction PDR — the decision, the options considered, the tradeoffs, and the rationale — for the authority to ratify.
• Not yet converged: record a candidate fork — the options split into distinct candidates to carry forward — so nothing is lost.

Declare the mode (deciding) in the session record and list the PDR draft or the candidate fork as the produced artifact.

Boundaries

Drafting a direction PDR is not ratifying it: the lead-pm drafts and facilitates, the product authority decides. Option framing and brainstorm facilitation live here in the lead-pm mode, never at the router.