Living Documentation

Leadership artifacts

Written by a person. Last read by a person on 2026-09-07, 1 day ago. Its facts were checked by the eval suite on 2026-09-07.

You are assessing whether somebody can fund, buy, scale and defend a program rather than only build one, you have 5 minutes and want the ask, or you want the whole argument in one page without clicking.

Scenario-based sample. Halden Systems is invented, and so is every figure about it.

Bottom line. 14 documents, one scenario, written in the order below. A capability gap at a 5,000-person software company costs about $6.1M a year, and the set asks for $2.1M over 3 years to close it.

The research is real and lives in its own file, because a fabricated citation is the one thing here a reader could check and catch.

Two ways in

Read the whole set on one page. Every document in order, in one scroll, with a contents list. This is the version to send somebody who does not want to click.

Start at the scenario and follow the next-step link at the foot of each page.

In a hurry? The executive readout is 9 slides and answers what it costs, what happens if we do nothing, and how we would know it worked.

The situation and the evidence

What is broken, and how we know. Written before anything proposes anything.

  1. The situation at Halden Systems — the scenario every other document answers.
  2. Literature review — the real research, in 2 tiers, with the one claim we refuse to cite.
  3. The capability survey — including the 3 results least convenient for the program.
  4. The people this is for — 6 learners and 1 sponsor, each naming what it rules out.

The case

  1. The first 90 days — the stance the set is written from.
  2. Capability strategy — the spine.
  3. The objections — the 3 arguments this always meets.
  4. What to change that is not training — 10 recommendations, most costing nothing.

Execution and money

  1. Project plan — 4 phases, each gated by a named decider.
  2. Statement of work — where the out-of-scope section is the half that matters.
  3. Budget and vendor evaluation — weights fixed before any vendor was named.
  4. Scaling proposal — with the conditions under which the program stops.

The ask, and what it cost

  1. Executive readout — 9 slides.
  2. What this set cost to produce — hours and elapsed days, and the parts that did not compress.

Why these are here and not in a PDF

A strategy document, a statement of work, a budget model and a deck all quote the same figures. They are written weeks apart by the same person under pressure, they disagree, and the disagreement is found in the room by the person being asked for money.

Every figure in these pages comes from a data file the others read. Changing the headcount in one document changes it in all of them, and quoting a number in prose fails the build.