Tool 28 of 32 · about an hour
Trade-Off Price Tag
Every change to the plan gets a written price before it is accepted. Nothing is absorbed silently.
Any time a change to the committed plan is requested, before that change takes effect, and again at every checkpoint next to the baseline.
What it is for
To put a written price on every change to the plan before it is accepted, so silent absorption cannot kill the plan while everyone keeps nodding.
The failure it catches
Scope changes that get absorbed silently are how a plan dies while everyone keeps nodding. Nothing is free, and pretending otherwise just hides where the cost landed. The hidden cost returns as resentment or as silent requirement changes.
Why it works
A one-page tag, what is requested, what it invalidates, what it delays, what it costs, accepted before effect, makes the cost visible. Reasonableness is not the test. The tag is. A change can still be accepted. It just cannot be accepted for free.
How to run it
- Any change to the plan, an addition, a swap, a rescue mission, a scope cut, gets a written price before it is accepted.
- The tag says what is requested, by whom, dated; what it invalidates, work, decisions, measurements; what it delays and by how long; what it costs in hours, morale, optionality, and the numbers the plan is measured on.
- The decision-holder accepts it, signed, dated. No acknowledgment, no change.
- File the accepted tag with the plan. The running file is the change history, readable at every checkpoint next to the baseline.
How to read the result
The tag is binary: priced and accepted, or not in effect. A change that went through the tag first is an adjustment, legitimate by construction, however large. A change discovered in effect without a tag is a breach of the contract's change clause, however small and however reasonable. It is logged and dated. A second breach is treated the same way as a second refusal to sign. Reasonableness is not the test. The tag is. The tag records cost. It does not veto. The decision-holder can accept any price knowingly.
How to run it well
- The requester pays the pricing cost. That itself filters frivolous churn.
- Price changes to committed plan items, not day-to-day judgment inside a task.
Where it breaks
- Used to obstruct every small course-correction it becomes red tape and gets routed around, which kills it.
- Pricing theatrically high to deter changes is manipulation and burns the tool.
- The tag records cost, it does not veto. The decision-holder can accept any price knowingly.
What would prove it wrong
Tagged-and-accepted changes that still produce plan drift with no one able to say when it was decided would mean written pricing does not buy the claimed discipline.
What we watch
Whether changes that went through a tag stay attributable at checkpoints, or whether the plan still dies one reasonable adjustment at a time with nobody able to point at when.
Ask yourself
- Has any recent change to the plan taken effect without a written price?
- For the last addition or swap, what did it delay, invalidate, and cost?
- Are small course-corrections inside a task being tagged, or only changes to committed plan items?
- Did the decision-holder accept the price in writing before the change started, or after?
Fed by: Decision Contract
Feeds: Decision Contract, Gate-First Sequencing, Checkpoint Review