OCE.9:4.2 - Trace the contribution and exception paths with participants

Walk backward from the accepted result to its request, then forward through a representative exception. Ask each participant to show the input used, contribution made, next recipient and basis for accepting or returning it.

Inspect the crossings that can defeat the slice: source/version interpretation, effective assignment, decision authority, access, equipment, provider response, information custody, available time and support. A chart or a specification helps locate these questions but does not answer them.

Obtain the participants’ account of the difficult parts. A receiver may know why a formally complete package is unusable; a provider may reveal a support-window limit absent from the design.

When participants can perform separate tasks but the contribution still fails, choose one action at a revealing moment. Explain what encompassing work is being performed through it now and which constituent actions make it possible. For example, interpreting a source can be part of judging support for a claim while that judgement is part of preparing an inspection package. The package’s intended use changes what the interpretation must establish.

Use B.1.5.EW to follow those connections in both directions, only while they change performance, learning, allocation or use. Recover an unclear operation, obtain a capable contributor, or practise an understood operation under the encompassing conditions. Stop at an understood operation or an available contribution sufficient for this use. Keep the genuine earlier-result dependencies alongside this vertical. An enabling tool or external service has its own relation to the work; needing it does not by itself make its production a constituent action.

Use available knowledge to vary one whole condition and identify what must change in the selected action; then consider a limitation of that action and its effect on the whole. Distinguish the absent intermediate operation from inadequate access, a misleading cue or an infeasible demand. Further observation is useful when its attainable result can change the repair, what can be concluded about the capability or how the result may be used, and that gain warrants its full burden.