DOCA.6:4 - Solution

Retain an opportunity when its expected use or learning value justifies the burden of keeping it. Describe paths as conditional finite transitions; qualify them before making a reachability claim.

DOCA.6:4.1 - State why and for how long something is retained

Name the subject, receiving use, protected conditions, and the horizon or horizons that actually affect this inquiry. Use the horizon needed by the opportunity; do not impose universal near-, medium-, and long-term buckets. When horizons differ, preserve that difference rather than merging their anticipated results into one comparison.

For each retained opportunity, keep its contribution and support configuration, present qualification, source or parent candidate, retention reason, material retention burden, and revisit or discard condition recoverable. Name who will reconsider it when someone has accepted that responsibility. A source pointer may suffice for an unchanged description.

Distinguish preserving an account from preserving an obtainable option. Saving a direction in a note does not reserve a provider, renew data rights, maintain a skill, or keep equipment ready. If retention needs resources or continuing Work, identify that burden and the actual authority or arrangement. Without it, retain a conditional possibility or description, not a claim that the option remains available.

An ordinary two-sentence account is enough:

Keep the permitted manual-review route as the current reference and the retrieval-assisted route as conditional on representative data use and evaluation. Revisit the second when those results arrive or at the end of the ninety-day inquiry; saving its description reserves no data, supplier time, or implementation budget.

DOCA.6:4.2 - Make each stepping-stone claim testable

Name the later option or reachable region, the proposed enabling transition, and the evidence connecting the step to that later use. Ask what becomes possible, less costly, or better qualified because of this step, and what could show that the connection fails.

When a later opportunity is still unknown, a smaller retention claim may suffice: keep an examined construction for an affordable next question. C.40 supplies the development and continuation Method. Preserve the material, operation and conditions that let someone try that continuation. Judge its burden against what the next answer could change; do not invent a distant payoff or call this a qualified path to an unnamed opportunity.

Keep a candidate stepping stone distinct from one whose retention is justified under the stated policy. A plausible connection may justify a bounded inquiry, but does not by itself justify performing the step. State the value, burden, delay, uncertainty, and protected conditions that make retention worthwhile for this use.

A data-access question can be a candidate stepping stone toward representative evaluation. Its possible answers change which evaluation routes remain available. The question itself grants no access and establishes no model capability. A useful course, preliminary project, archive variant, or “zone of proximal development” label likewise needs the particular enabling relation and holder-owned evidence.

Do not require immediate dominance. Retention can be justified by later reachability, coverage, learning, or reversibility even when another candidate has a stronger current result. Conversely, novelty or diversity alone is not proof of future usefulness.

DOCA.6:4.3 - Construct paths from their stage-specific configurations

For every material step in a path or branch, name its own starting configuration, finite change, and resulting candidate configuration. Write S_i -> Δ_i -> S_i+1 only as compact notation for those three descriptions, not as evidence that the transition is feasible.

Recover what the starting configuration inherits: established or still-conditional capability, support, access, ongoing Work, resource demand, remaining uncertainty, and effects of earlier choices. If the earlier step has not occurred, the later starting configuration is conditional too. If the path can branch, name the condition that distinguishes the continuations and the stop when neither is supported.

State each step’s transition burden, reversibility, and effects on later options. Do not repeatedly credit the full difference from the original configuration as each later step’s contribution. Use C.11.CRC for finite comparisons with the complete relevant result, resource, affected-System/distributional, and protected coordinates. Each coordinate keeps its own scale and polarity under the common comparison basis. When step horizons or scenarios differ, obtain an adequate mapping or keep those comparison claims separate.

Use DOCA.5 to qualify the jointly necessary transitions, shared resources, timing, and inherited obligations. A sequence of individually plausible steps remains a conditional path until the necessary joint basis exists. Return a missing holder, access, support, or implementation result through A.15.9. Do not substitute a path diagram for the supplying practice’s conclusion.

A path can preserve alternatives without selecting a programme. Human capability-development programmes remain HCD.2’s composition and comparison question; authorized participants retain programme choice, and Learning Product work realizes the selected programme and pattern contributions as a Guide.

DOCA.6:4.4 - Keep the set inspectable without forcing a winner

Preserve materially different candidates, including conditional directions and a useful baseline, when their retention reasons remain current. Keep a candidate ruled out for this use outside its live opportunity set, with enough explanation to avoid rediscovering the same defeated claim. Preserve other uses separately when their basis remains supported. A historical record can remain useful without being a live option.

Use a comparison only for the question it answers. A result about non-domination requires a declared comparator, complete relevant coordinates, and admissibility basis. A retained candidate need not be non-dominated now. Different contribution premises or horizons may support only a partial comparison; do not invent one scalar ranking to make the portfolio look settled.

Make resource interactions visible when retention itself competes for scarce attention, expertise, access, or maintenance. If the available retention allowance cannot support the set, return the needed allocation or reduction decision to its authorized owner. Meanwhile, describe only what the available maintenance actually supports. Do not silently make every member “available” by naming it in the portfolio.

Stop expanding the account when the next missing result belongs to a holder practice, an actual pool-treatment decision, or a local choice. The inquiry can return a useful partial set.

DOCA.6:4.5 - Use archive, front, and pool treatment only for their actual questions

Use C.18 — Open-Ended Search Archive and Front Stewardship when generation or retention actually needs a search archive, front, descriptor space, lineage, or exploration policy. Its archive preserves exploration or stepping-stone value; its front reports current non-domination under a declared comparator and admissibility. Neither return is a recommendation, selected-set declaration, or work permission.

For generation, recover the generator, operators, descriptors, source/lineage, and retention basis that matter. Claim a changed possibility space only when that stronger claim changes the inquiry. A newly visited region under the same effective generation conditions is exploration, not evidence of expansion. Use C.18 for the earlier and candidate space declarations, changed component, supported mode, evidence, and blocked overread; causal claims require the direct causal result.

Use C.19 — Explore–Exploit Governor when the current question is how to treat a still-live pool under its declared policy: widen it, keep its frontier, narrow it to a subset, or sunset a line. The policy may remain unchanged while that treatment question becomes current. Selecting the next local candidate or probe is a different question, as are generating a variant, declaring a selected set, and enacting Work.

Ordinary opportunity retention does not require all those practices. A few descriptions with recoverable reasons and conditions can be enough.

DOCA.6:4.6 - Return a discriminating question and reconsider locally

Name the next question whose plausible answers would retain, narrow, reject, or open a particular opportunity or path. Use the declared receiving policy to consider relevant value, inquiry burden, delay, protections, and uncertainty. Reuse a sufficient partial comparison; no complete ranking is needed merely to state the question.

If the question becomes “which candidate or probe should we choose now?”, return to the actual local choice or PSD decision-support question. A proposed probe needs its own feasibility, exposure, authority, and execution basis before it becomes recommended or performed. An information request is not that authorization.

Revisit at the declared trigger, including a material source, use, horizon, resource, support, permission, or evidence change. Use DOCA.8 to update the smallest affected opportunity and its dependent paths or advice. Preserve unaffected candidates and source lineage; retire a retention claim when its later use disappears, its cost no longer fits, or a qualified result defeats its enabling connection.

Recognition and assurance. A usable account shows what is retained, why, for how long, under which conditions, and what changes next. Whether a path is reachable, a step causes a later possibility, or a retained option will remain obtainable requires the appropriate domain evidence, DOCA.5 qualification, and actual resource or authority basis. The clarity of the account supplies none of those assurances.