Effective October 2026
This update extends the September 2026 decision-readiness vocabulary by defining public Lean Intake Analysis™ terminology for decision authority. It establishes the roles used to describe who may decide, who may constrain a decision, who owns attached conditions, how unresolved authority is escalated, and what triggers re-review. The update does not publish proprietary scoring thresholds, algorithms, or controlled certification artifacts.
1. Purpose of this update
The September 2026 methodology update established that a request can be ready for a decision without being ready for delivery and formalized the public states Proceed, Proceed with conditions, Hold, and Stop / Do not proceed. October adds the authority architecture needed to make those states operational.
A decision state without a legitimate decision owner is incomplete governance. Likewise, an approval with unresolved conditions is incomplete if no one owns those conditions or if the organization has no rule for what happens when they are missed.
2. New and clarified terminology
| Term | October 2026 public definition |
|---|---|
| Decision owner | The person or formally delegated role accountable for making or ratifying a specific intake decision. |
| Domain authority | A role or governance body with delegated authority over a material domain, such as finance, security, architecture, legal, data, risk, compliance, procurement, or operations. |
| Decision contributor | A person or function that supplies analysis, evidence, options, or stakeholder input but does not own the final decision. |
| Condition owner | The person or role accountable for satisfying a stated condition attached to Proceed with conditions. |
| Escalation authority | The role or governance body authorized to resolve a cross-domain conflict, exception, or decision beyond the current level of delegated authority. |
| Review trigger | A date, event, threshold, dependency, or material change that requires an existing decision to be reconsidered. |
| Decision question | A concise statement of the choice the organization is making at the current point in the intake lifecycle. |
3. Decision rights attach to decisions, not meetings
LIA will describe authority in relation to a decision question. A governance council, steering committee, PMO, architecture board, security function, or executive may participate in intake, but participation alone does not establish decision ownership. The methodology therefore separates attendance, consultation, recommendation, domain authority, and final decision authority.
Public LIA guidance will use the following test: if the decision were challenged tomorrow, could the organization identify who had authority to make it and what authority that role was exercising? If not, the decision-rights record is incomplete.
4. Decision state versus governance action
| Type | Public term | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Decision state | Proceed | The organization authorizes the next defined step. |
| Decision state | Proceed with conditions | The request may advance, but explicit conditions, owners, or review points remain attached. |
| Decision state | Hold | The request should not advance yet because a material readiness or governance condition remains unresolved. |
| Decision state | Stop / Do not proceed | The current request should not continue in its present form. |
| Governance action | Escalate | The current authority cannot legitimately resolve the decision; the request moves to a defined higher or different authority without implying that the request has failed. |
| Governance action | Re-review | A prior decision is reconsidered because a defined trigger or material contextual change has occurred. |
Escalate and Re-review are intentionally classified as governance actions rather than final decision states. An escalation should eventually return a decision state. A re-review may confirm, modify, condition, hold, or reverse the prior decision.
5. Conditional approval requirements
Beginning with methodology version 2026.10, public LIA materials will describe a material condition as governed only when four elements are visible:
- Condition: what must be true, completed, approved, tested, or resolved.
- Owner: who is accountable for satisfying the condition.
- Evidence: what will demonstrate that the condition has been met.
- Review / consequence: what happens if the condition is not satisfied by the defined trigger.
The methodology does not require every minor action item to be elevated into a formal condition. The requirement applies when the unresolved item is material to the legitimacy, risk, scope, or continuation of the decision.
6. Escalation rules
LIA treats escalation as a predesigned route for authority, not as a synonym for conflict. Public guidance will identify escalation as appropriate when one or more of the following conditions exists:
- The decision exceeds the current role’s delegated authority or financial threshold.
- Two or more domain authorities reach incompatible conclusions that cannot be reconciled within their delegated scope.
- A required exception can only be granted by a higher or different governance authority.
- The consequence, risk profile, regulatory exposure, or organizational scope becomes materially greater than the level originally approved.
- A condition cannot be satisfied without changing the underlying decision question or commitment.
- The accountable decision owner is unavailable, conflicted, or otherwise lacks legitimate authority for the decision.
An escalation should preserve the existing intake record and identify the specific unresolved authority or conflict. It should not require the request to restart unless the request itself materially changes.
7. Re-review triggers
Re-review exists because a good decision can become outdated when its context changes. LIA does not require continuous reapproval. It requires organizations to define the material changes that invalidate or reopen the decision.
- Material scope expansion or a new user / customer population.
- Significant change in cost, benefit, funding source, or capacity commitment.
- New security, privacy, legal, regulatory, data, architecture, or operational information.
- Failure or change of a dependency that was material to the original decision.
- Movement from experiment, pilot, or proof of concept into production or enterprise-scale use.
- Increase in AI-agent autonomy, decision scope, data access, or real-world action authority.
- Expiration of a time-bounded approval, risk acceptance, exception, or waiver.
8. Minimum public decision-rights record
The public methodology now recognizes the following as the minimum information needed to make authority traceable without revealing proprietary LIA scoring logic:
| Record element | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Decision question | States the choice being made now. |
| Decision owner | Identifies the authority accountable for the decision. |
| Material evidence and assumptions | Shows the basis on which the decision was made. |
| Relevant domain authorities | Identifies domains with binding authority, conditions, or exceptions. |
| Decision state | Records Proceed, Proceed with conditions, Hold, or Stop / Do not proceed. |
| Conditions and condition owners | Makes unresolved material obligations executable and traceable. |
| Escalation path | Identifies where unresolved authority or conflict goes next. |
| Review trigger | Defines when the decision must be reconsidered. |
9. Relationship to AI-enabled decisions
AI and agentic systems can participate in analysis, recommendations, and increasingly in action. LIA therefore treats machine authority as part of the decision-rights context whenever an AI system can materially influence or execute an organizational commitment. Public LIA guidance will ask what the system may do autonomously, what requires human approval, who can override, and which event requires escalation or re-review.
This is consistent with NIST AI RMF guidance that risk context should support go/no-go decisions and with 2026 Deloitte research emphasizing dynamic decision rights, override privileges, escalation, and accountability for AI-enabled decisions (NIST, 2023; Deloitte, 2026).
10. What changed from version 2026.09
| Area | 2026.09 | 2026.10 change |
|---|---|---|
| Decision readiness | Defined the condition required to make an accountable decision. | No change; remains the upstream readiness concept. |
| Decision states | Proceed, Proceed with conditions, Hold, Stop / Do not proceed. | No change to the four decision states. |
| Decision rights | Referenced generally. | Formal public definitions added for decision owner, domain authority, contributor, condition owner, and escalation authority. |
| Escalation | Planned for future clarification. | Defined as a governance action with explicit triggers. |
| Re-review | Referenced through review points. | Formalized as a governance action tied to material change or defined triggers. |
| Conditional approval | Conditions recognized. | Four minimum elements established: condition, owner, evidence, and review / consequence. |
11. What has not changed
- Lean Intake Analysis™ remains a methodology; LIA Compass™ remains software designed to operationalize the methodology.
- Human decision authority remains explicit. A score, workflow, or AI recommendation does not become the decision owner.
- LIA does not require every request to pass through the same governance body or evidence burden.
- A Hold remains a valid active governance decision rather than a failed intake outcome.
- The detailed readiness score, proprietary weighting, controlled worksheets, certification exercises, and selected decision-engine logic remain nonpublic.
12. Versioning and next update
This publication establishes methodology version 2026.10 for public decision-rights terminology. The next planned methodology topic is evidence sufficiency and proportionality: how organizations distinguish enough evidence to decide from unnecessary documentation, and how the evidence burden should change with consequence, reversibility, and risk.
References
- Deloitte. (2026, March 3). AI and the future of human decision-making. Deloitte Insights. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends/2026/decision-making-with-ai.html
- National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2023). Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0). https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/nist.ai.100-1.pdf
- Project Management Institute. (2016). Governance of portfolios, programs, and projects: A practice guide. PMI.
- Smith & Welch LLC. (2026a). The decision-readiness gap: Why work enters delivery before the organization is ready to make the decision (LIA Research Paper 2026-01). Lean Intake Analysis™.
- Smith & Welch LLC. (2026b). Methodology Update 2026.09: Defining decision readiness before delivery. Lean Intake Analysis™.