The enquiry behind the trial
End. Meta Project Innovation seeks ideas that improve project planning and delivery along value, feasibility, surprise and innovation. Its ambition extends beyond optimising a supplied plan.
Concept. The foray already includes demand challenge before planning and claims tied to evidence sensors among its candidate ideas. Those questions provide a conceptual home for this trial’s scope and evidence lenses.
Construction. The fictional cloud migration puts those questions beside whole-package capacity allocation, typed dependency paths and schedule heuristics. Five independent lenses share a current decision ledger.
Limit. The inputs and scores are invented. Software checks cover the stated calculations; they do not demonstrate a better project choice or a delivery benefit. The wider foray ambition remains unfinished.
Keep or restore your experiment
Export the current settings as JSON, then copy the text somewhere safe. Paste it back to restore all five lenses and the selected view. Nothing is stored automatically. Outputs are recalculated from the settings; notes, files and operational data are not included.
Challenge the demand
Before scheduling inherited scope, decide what should disappear, shrink, change form, become a standard, be automated, be tested cheaply, or genuinely proceed.
Effort points are relative workload units, not cost or duration. A fixed illustrative multiplier estimates immediate commitment. Later test or replacement work is not costed. Mandatory obligations stay visible when their proposed solution changes.
| Demand | Why it exists | Effort | Disposition |
|---|
See the relative effort assumptions
Delete × 0; shrink × 0.45; substitute × 0.35; standardise × 0.55; automate × 0.65; test first × 0.20; proceed × 1. These are invented multipliers, not measured savings. A lower commitment does not demonstrate that the need or obligation has been met.
Make plan claims testable
A completed activity is not the same as current evidence; evidence is not the same as a supported claim; and a supported claim is not an approved gate.
The checker reports the weakest link in each chain. It does not certify GDPR compliance, safety, operational readiness or any other external standard.
| Claim and sensor | Activity done | Evidence | Threshold met | Reviewer accepts | Chain state |
|---|
Allocate scarce expertise in whole packages
Teams disclose the outcome unlocked, cost of waiting, confidence in that claim, minimum useful package and a credible alternative. The protocol allocates days, not fictional money.
A greedy heuristic ranks a score per day, then funds each whole package that fits. It can leave a better combination unfunded; it does not find a general optimum. The weights are invented scenario choices.
| Demand | Delay cost 1–10 | Evidence 0–100% | Minimum days | Alternative |
|---|
See the allocation rule
Score per day = (delay cost × confidence / 100 × alternative factor + reuse × 0.55) / minimum days. The alternative factor is 1.15 for none, 1 for partial and 0.82 for yes. Fixed reuse points: S1 = 4, S2 = 2, S3 = 3, S4 = 5. Ties retain S1–S4 order. A skipped package does not consume capacity. Zero confidence removes the delay term but leaves the assumed reuse term.
For example, with 4 days, a 3-day package scoring 3 per day is picked before two 2-day packages scoring 2.5 each: its total score is 9, while the pair would score 10. A ranking is a discussion aid, not a proof of the best allocation.
Inspect typed, directed dependencies
Precedence, evidence, approval and feedback links mean different things. A directed precedence cycle makes a schedule infeasible; a feedback loop may be useful learning; a second evidence path may be resilience.
These are structural path checks, with the unavailable node removed. A path does not establish that all prerequisites, evidence or approvals are satisfied. The schedule in the next lens uses a separate fixed graph.
Read the network without the diagram
Path tests include only their stated types. Feedback links are excluded from release paths and precedence-cycle checks. Each link can be enabled or disabled independently above.
Run a transparent planner tournament
Five declared heuristics schedule eight dependency-constrained tasks under a base case and two duration stresses. Each task uses one workstream until it finishes. The app compares the resulting schedules.
Lower regret is better under this invented score. Regret compares only these five heuristics in each scenario, then averages the three differences equally. “Balanced” is a weighted priority rule; no robust optimisation or calibrated forecast is implemented.
| Policy | Average regret | Base finish | Base first assumed outcome | Base unresolved uncertainty at week 6 | Base reuse by week 6 |
|---|
Base-scenario schedule
See the policy rules and scenario changes
At each finish time, all completed tasks release capacity; eligible tasks are ranked using their scenario duration. Ties use task ID order. Tasks are indivisible, never pre-empted and start as soon as capacity and all predecessors allow. A task marked “outcome” is assumed to yield its outcome when finished; the app does not test actual validation.
- Risk-first: 2 × risk + uncertainty − 0.2 × duration.
- Value-first: 2 × value + 0.4 × risk − 0.2 × duration.
- Learning-first: 2 × uncertainty + 0.5 × risk − 0.2 × duration.
- Reuse-first: 2 × reuse + 0.4 × value − 0.2 × duration.
- Balanced heuristic (formerly “Robust balance”): risk + value + uncertainty + reuse − 0.45 × duration.
Scenario score = 2 × finish week + 3 × first outcome week + 1.2 × unresolved uncertainty at week 6 + 0.18 × Σ(risk × task finish week) − 0.65 × reuse completed by week 6. All weights and task points are synthetic. Uncertainty is the sum of points on all unfinished tasks, not a critical-path measure; reuse is credited only on completion.
Data stress adds 2 weeks to P1 and 1 week to P3. Access-control stress adds 2 weeks to P2 and 1 week to P7. These changes are known to the scheduling rule before it starts; this is not adaptive replanning after a surprise.
| Task | Predecessors | Duration | Risk | Value | Uncertainty | Reuse | Outcome |
|---|
Current decision ledger
A current summary of each independent lens, its assumptions and next decision trigger. This is recalculated output, not an immutable audit log or a single coupled plan.
| Lens | Current reading | Evidence basis | Remaining uncertainty / next trigger |
|---|