OCE.12:4.3.1 - Obtain an agreement on incompatible contributions

The immediate result is agreement on who will contribute what and under which conditions, or a specific unresolved condition or refusal. Use this branch when cooperation requires an agreement that has not yet been reached.

Prepare participation and the means to negotiate. Obtain willing participants, time and a safe way to raise objections, consult represented people or decline a proposal. Identify those affected by the proposal, those able to provide its contributions and those authorized to commit them. A representative needs a mandate covering the proposed change; where it is missing, obtain the represented party’s response before treating the contribution as agreed. Include people whose existing work would be displaced, even if they were absent from the first meeting.

Choose a negotiation Method that the participants can use, with a competent facilitator when needed. For example, the CBI Mutual Gains Approach brief explains how to prepare around interests, mandates and alternatives, develop combinations of terms before commitment, discuss reasons for sharing costs and benefits, and arrange follow-through. A team already using the voluntarily adopted protocol described in CB.13 can continue with it under its stated conditions. Confirm that participants can perform the selected Method; obtain qualified help or develop the needed capability under step 4.4, allowing for its time and cost.

Recover the condition behind each objection. Ask which needed result the proposal would prevent or which protected condition it would violate, and what observation or change could answer the concern. Distinguish a required outcome from an assumed means. “The complete interface must be ready by day 20” may combine a need for daily data with an untested assumption that automatic control must arrive in the same release. Confirm this interpretation with the party that set the requirement; only someone authorized to change it may relax it.

Choose the work that can answer the objection. For a disputed technical possibility, obtain evidence from a qualified specialist. An assumed necessary means can be reconsidered with B.5.QD.CF. A dispute about consequences may need D.4 to examine different value premises and develop alternatives. Obtain a missing mandate from the party entitled to grant it. Establish what information participants may share and keep protected information confidential. A relevant condition that is withheld or unknown remains unresolved.

Construct and investigate whole proposals. For each condition, ask what else could supply the needed result: change the proposed scope, timing, performer, support or distribution of burden. Combine compatible changes into an arrangement that each party can assess, while retaining the applicable technical, safety and institutional constraints. Explore proposals before asking for commitments. Include what each party can feasibly do if no agreement is reached; refusal can remain preferable to an unsupported commitment.

When acceptability depends on an unknown, formulate the question that would change the choice and obtain the contribution needed to answer it. A proposed read-only release may need an engineering probe and an offer of support from the provider. Agree the probe’s question and cost. Before doing it, assess how conducting it could affect participants and ongoing work, agree the conditions needed to protect them, and obtain the required permission. Permission for the probe does not authorize introduction. Return the evidence with its limits. Then revise the whole proposal: a support offer can change price, local workload and displaced work as well as technical feasibility. If the probe rules out the release, revise or reject that option.

Make the burden and terms discussable. Show what each participant would receive, provide, pay, defer or risk under the same proposed arrangement. Use reasons the parties can examine, such as measured support demand, protected service capacity and the value of the first usable result. Let them question both the estimates and the proposed distribution. Agreement on how to compare proposals may help, but a favorable combined score does not establish a party’s acceptance.

Estimate the effort and cost of preparation, representation, consultation, facilitation and subject inquiry. Include waiting for replies, implementation, continuing support, monitoring and possible renegotiation; identify the work these activities displace. Resolve contested allocations with the people authorized to decide them. If investigation or negotiation would exceed its authorized effort, obtain a revised allocation, reduce the question or stop.

Obtain acceptance of one complete version. Present the revised scope, contributions, limits, timing, resources and change conditions together. Ask each party, directly or through an authorized representative, whether they accept their contribution and conditions in that arrangement. Distinguish acceptance, conditional acceptance, refusal and an unanswered question. A condition such as “only with funded support” is not satisfied by agreement to seek funding. If an amendment changes another participant’s burden or benefit, return the same amended version to the affected parties; consult the represented people when the mandate no longer covers it.

Keep the accepted terms and remaining questions usable by those who must act. Silence, attendance and a majority’s preference do not establish mutual agreement. Where a party refuses or a necessary condition remains unmet, identify what prevents agreement. The parties can revise the proposal or leave it unagreed. An authorized decision without mutual consent, where available, needs its own grounds and should be presented as that decision.

Return the result to the receiving work and revisit changed conditions. Give those responsible for the work that requested cooperation the accepted contributions and conditions, or the unresolved issue. When the agreement concerns an engineered product and the organization that provides it, use OCE.7 to coordinate the product and organization architecture decisions through their constraints and required contributions, with each decision made under its own authority. Use the agreed terms and remaining uncertainty in SYSE.6 when deciding the engineering architecture, or in SYSE.24 when choosing how to obtain an engineering result. Where a promise is being established or changed, use OPS.13 to establish its accepted terms. Agreement alone supplies neither technical evidence nor permission for introduction, and does not establish that the work has been performed.

Agree how a consequential change will reach the affected parties and who will obtain their responses. If promised support disappears, identify which accepted contributions depended on it, obtain feasible replacements and return the altered whole for acceptance. Keep independent results whose conditions still hold. If no replacement supports the proposed use, return the dependent choice to its decision maker, the unmet support need to the person responsible for arranging it, and any affected promise to the party authorized to change it. Until an authorized revision occurs, the existing commitment still applies.