C.40:4.1 - Make one small development pass

1. Recover usable material and the local question. Identify the actual editable or executable input and the conditions for using it. State the difference you can examine and any selected receiving contribution. Keep an original when comparison or recovery requires it.
2. Select and perform a feasible variation. Use the available professional operation to change, recombine or use the material differently. State what is changed and what remains protected. If the operation is unknown, use C.39 for that local contribution. When several changing operations need selection from their continuing results, use section 4.11. An unperformed variation remains a proposal with its missing prerequisite.
3. Examine the resulting difference. Compare what was intended with what can now be observed or otherwise established under the relevant Method. Include a useful unexpected difference. Distinguish a result that helps one question and fails another.
4. Preserve the material needed for the justified next use. Keep the changed artifact or result and the inputs, settings or explanation needed to continue. Retain a failed or mixed result when it changes the next question. A descriptor or favourable evaluation alone may not let another participant reproduce or develop the result.
5. Choose continuation, retention or stop. Ask what another attainable result could change, what producing and carrying it would cost, and what work that would displace. Continue only the branches that warrant that burden. A sufficient result or a lack of worthwhile continuation can close the search.

Several variations can share one pass when they answer the same local question and their outcomes remain distinguishable. No population size, fixed branching factor, archive, new hypothesis or exhaustive trial of every variant is required.