Proposition Lifecycle Board¶
Workflow board — instantiates Propositional Mode Governance
A board or workflow that moves propositions through modes while preserving obligations and transition records.
A Proposition Lifecycle Board is a visual, kanban-style workflow whose columns are epistemic modes and whose cards are propositions; the work is moving cards between mode columns under a transition protocol, with each card's obligations traveling with it and gating its advance. Its distinguishing idea is that it makes the flow of propositions through modes visible and enforceable as a team ritual: a pile of unverified assumptions stacking up near a deadline is obvious on a board in a way it never is in a document. It is the workflow you work — actively pushing cards forward and, when they fail, backward — as opposed to a static record you read. Advancement is earned: a card cannot cross into "verified" until the obligations of its current column are met.
Example¶
A spacecraft systems-engineering team runs a proposition lifecycle board for its requirements and design claims. The columns are modes: Proposed → Assumption → Under Verification → Verified → Retired. A card — "the antenna gimbal survives launch vibration" — starts in Assumption, its basis noted as heritage from a prior mission, carrying an obligation: run the vibration qualification test. It cannot slide to Verified on confidence alone; the column's exit criteria — the test passed, a reviewer's sign-off — must be met, and the move records who authorized it, when, and on what evidence.[n1] When a later analysis contradicts the heritage claim, the card moves back to Under Verification, not silently forward, and its obligation reopens. Standups walk the board left to right, and a work-in-progress limit on the Under Verification column keeps the team from carrying fifty unproven claims toward a design freeze. The board is what turns "we'll verify it eventually" into a lane a proposition has to earn its way out of.
How it works¶
The board maps three things onto a workflow. Each card is a proposition placed in the column for its current mode, so the board's population is the working inventory of governed claims. Moving a card between columns is a governed transition — allowed only when the source column's exit criteria are satisfied, recorded with its authoriser and evidence, and reversible when a claim fails later. Each card carries its obligations, and a column's "done" criteria gate the crossing, so a claim cannot advance faster than its evidence. The board's whole contribution is the movement mechanic made social and visible: the state of every proposition, and the queue of what has yet to earn promotion, is legible at a glance and worked in a recurring ritual.
Tuning parameters¶
- Column set — how many modes get their own lane. More columns capture finer lifecycle stages but widen the board past what a standup can walk.
- Work-in-progress limits — caps on how many cards may sit in a column. Limits force the team to finish verifying before starting more, but can stall intake.
- Exit-criteria strictness — how demanding each column's "done" definition is. Strict criteria make advancement meaningful; loose ones let cards drift forward unearned.
- Transition authority — who may move a card. Open movement is fast but invites optics-driven drags; gated movement is slower but trustworthy.
- Backward-move policy — whether a "verified" card can be demoted when contradicting evidence lands, and how readily.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is visibility and earned advancement: stalled propositions become impossible to ignore, and a card's crossing into a stronger mode has to be paid for with met obligations rather than asserted. Its failure mode is cards moved for optics — dragged into "verified" under schedule pressure without meeting the exit criteria — at which point the tidy columns are a theater that certifies claims the evidence never earned. A board can also drift from reality, its columns describing a world that no longer matches the artifacts. The guarding discipline is that exit criteria must actually gate the move and that backward moves must be allowed and used — a lifecycle with no demotion lane is just a ratchet toward false certainty. The board enacts and records transitions, but it is not the authoritative account of each claim's basis; it should be reconciled against the record that holds those.
How it implements the components¶
propositional_unit_inventory— each card is a discrete proposition on the board; the board's full set of cards is the working inventory of governed claims.mode_transition_protocol— moving a card between columns is a governed, recorded transition, permitted only on met exit criteria and reversible when a claim later fails.obligation_register— each card's obligations and its column's exit criteria travel with it and gate advancement, so a claim cannot outrun its evidence.
It does not record why each proposition holds its mode or trace each claim's dependency scope (mode_assignment_basis, dependency_and_scope_trace) — that is Epistemic Status Ledger, its nearest twin: the board is the workflow that moves cards, whereas the ledger is the record that stores their bases and dependencies. Nor does it define which operations each mode-column licenses (licensed_operation_matrix), which is Mode-Operation Matrix.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Propositional Mode Governance — the board is the workflow that moves propositions through modes while preserving their obligations and transition records.
- Consumes: Mode-Operation Matrix supplies what each mode-column licenses, so a card's lane implies what may be done with it.
- Sibling mechanisms: Assumption Expiry Timer · Axiom Boundary Statement · Claim Status Labeling Standard · Decision Memo Epistemic-Mode Section · Epistemic Mode Linter · Epistemic Status Ledger · Hypothesis Promotion Gate · Mode-Operation Matrix · Premise Discharge Checklist
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Interface, Display & Cue
Rationale: The mechanism is a board surface that displays propositions by mode and affords governed, recorded transitions between columns.
Nearest alternative: Protocol, Workflow & Routine — Transition rules form a workflow, but the concrete deployed mechanism is the interactive board through which users move and inspect claims.
Review outcome: Adjudicated after independent review; high confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Organizational & Management Science
Origin pattern: Cross-disciplinary synthesis
Present-day reach: Universal
Rationale: Workflow boards that move governed items through statuses are canonical organizational process-management artifacts.
Related originating lineages:
- Computer Science & Software Engineering — State machines and issue-tracking systems materially shape mode transitions and durable records.
- Law & Governance — The law_governance tradition materially shaped Proposition Lifecycle Board through its own practice of formal rights, duties, remedies, review, and procedural constraint.
- Philosophy — Proposition Lifecycle Board is most plausibly rooted in the philosophy tradition because its characteristic form depends on logic, argument, normative analysis, and conceptual distinction. The assignment tracks that formative lineage, not the many settings in which the mechanism can now be applied.
Review resolution: Light authoritative-source research resolves the primary-origin disagreement in favor of organizational management. Lean Enterprise Institute: Visual Kanban Workflow Boards documents the defining practice, history, or theory described in the selected origin rationale. Other domains are retained only where the blind reviews identify material co-development or translation; broad later application is recorded separately as domain_reach=universal, while origin_mode=cross_disciplinary_synthesis describes the relationship among formative lineages.
Attribution caveat: The blind-review boundary with philosophy is substantive: those traditions materially developed, translated, or operationalized part of the mechanism. The cited provenance places its defining lineage in organizational management.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Researched adjudication after independent review; high confidence.
Sources consulted:
Notes¶
[n1] A definition of done is the agile practice of fixing explicit exit criteria a work item must satisfy before it counts as complete. On a proposition lifecycle board it becomes the per-column bar a card must clear to advance — the difference between a claim that has earned its mode and one merely dragged into a nicer column. ↩