MA.6:4 - Solution

MA.6:4.1 - Recover each number’s actual use

Ask what the number is meant to do: describe an expectation, set an ambition, request resources or record an authorization. Identify the relevant participant, period, quantity and assumptions.

Use the actual meaning rather than the file’s label. A document called “forecast” can contain a negotiated spending envelope; a budget can legitimately contain several distinct accounts.

MA.6:4.2 - Give the meanings their own revision and decision rules

Construct the forecast from adequate evidence and assumptions through MA.5. Use OPS.21 when the responsible management practice needs to construct the operating aim, target or comparison; reuse a sufficient supplied basis. Obtain actual resource decisions from their holders, with OPS.13 for supported service commitments and OPS.19 when contributions compete for shared provision. State how each result is revised and who can make the relevant decision.

Separate a request from a granted resource amount and from actual usable provision. A forecast revision does not itself authorize spending.

The distinction can be made in one small table.

MA.6:4.3 - Explain the consequential gaps

Put comparable quantities on an adequate common basis. Use MA.1–2 when a workload target must be translated into resource capability and payments.

Ask what each gap means. Expected demand below a target can call for a different action or revised ambition. Required capacity above authorized provision can call for a resource decision, changed scope or an explicit adverse scenario. Preserve uncertainty and the conditions under which an apparent gap exists.

Do not close the gap by editing the expectation to equal the authorized number. Change the relevant action or decision, then forecast its warranted consequence.

MA.6:4.4 - Return the connected accounts and required decision

Show the expectation, ambition, request and authorization at enough detail to locate the next decision. Preserve the forecast’s original assumptions when a later choice changes them.

Observe whether people can now report an unwelcome expectation and whether decisions about resources take that expectation into account. MA.9 examines persistent behavioral effects; the responsible organizational practice supplies a wider change in management arrangements.