- 1
Every kind of decision has a named owner.
A dozen or two classes, a person’s name beside each. A committee is not a name.
- 2
Every freedom given to a machine has a signed limit.
What may go through alone, where it must stop and ask. A number or a condition, with a review date.
- 3
Every proposal carries its evidence.
What is true now, what is proposed, why, the expected effect in money, and what was missing. Missing is shown as missing, never as zero.
- 4
A person signs.
Inside the limit the machine may act and the record says so. Outside it, the owner approves or rejects, with a reason.
- 5
The record cannot be rewritten.
Decisions are added, never edited or deleted. A correction is a new entry that points to the old one. Administrators included.
- 6
The effect is measured against a baseline fixed beforehand.
Write down the figure and its value before; measure the same figure the same way after. A result without a baseline proves nothing.
- 7
Data and models stay inside a perimeter the company controls.
Local processing is the default. Sending data out is the exception, and it needs a signature.
What this page is not
It is not the method. The method is how these seven rules become a company’s decision charter, its record and its measurements, for its own products, people and limits. That part is worked out with you, in the first conversation, under an engagement letter.