PSD.11:4 - Solution

Build consequence claims for the same receiving question, align only the meanings that can be aligned, apply the declared comparison rule, and return the supported relation together with uncertainty, dissent, and exact gaps.

PSD.11:4.1 - Fix the comparison, not just its column names

Name the recipient question, subject or holder, current configuration, horizon, relevant affected subjects, and exact alternatives. Use PSD.8’s set only as the candidate family; generation supplies no ranking. A proposal missing a decisive premise remains conditional rather than silently joining the eligible set.

Use PSD.9’s value account only for this comparison. Keep its attributed values, protected conditions, scales, and unagreed trade-offs. Use PSD.10’s bounded claims and discriminating questions only where their evidence concerns the same configuration and horizon.

These inputs can come from current qualified direct sources. If one is absent, stale, or incompatible, return the exact missing premise or narrow the comparison. Do not infer a usable value account from a workshop or a qualified forecast from a diagram.

PSD.11:4.2 - Establish consequence paths at the needed grain

For each material alternative, connect the proposed change to intermediate conditions and the consequences that the value account actually uses. Identify who or what bears each consequence, when it appears, whether it persists, and which enabling conditions it needs.

Include transition burdens, delayed effects, and shifted losses when they can alter the comparison. Distinguish the present arrangement from an empty or ideal baseline. Use C.11.CRC when the missing input is specifically a finite change’s contribution relative to the current configuration; reuse an already adequate contribution claim rather than reconstructing it.

Direct domain models and evidence supply effect estimates and mechanisms. A causal arrow or before–after difference is not sufficient causal support; use the direct causal or field guidance for a causal claim. A qualitative pathway can still identify a missing relationship without estimating its magnitude.

Do not extend a consequence beyond its qualified horizon without a stated model and source. If a short operating horizon excludes a material long-term lock-in or displaced loss, expose the exclusion and reopen the boundary where necessary.

PSD.11:4.2.1 - Construct and question a qualitative consequence network

Use this branch when the important consequences are understandable in ordinary terms but no qualified model yet connects the alternatives to them. It returns conditional consequence profiles and precise questions for investigation. It does not turn an elicited relationship into an established causal law. Reuse a sufficient domain model instead; use a quantitative or dynamic model when timing, magnitude, feedback or joint risk decides the answer.

1. Recover the participants’ reasons. For each affected party, name the desired state, the proposed action, any required resource and the quality by which that party would judge the result. Ask both “why is this needed?” and “how could it be obtained?” Attribute each answer; a modeler’s hypothesis about another person’s intention stays a hypothesis. Separate a required result from a prescribed task: two ways may obtain the same result while distributing work and discretion differently.
2. Construct explicit relationships. Write each important arrow as a sentence. For an external provision, identify who needs what, why, who could supply it and through which work. For a necessary combination, state which conditions must hold together; for alternative means, state whether either suffices and whether both may coexist. For a quality contribution, explain how an action or intermediate condition supports or impairs that quality. Keep necessity, sufficiency and a merely favorable contribution distinct. Name the conditions and evidence or attributed judgement supporting each sentence. A plausible relationship without support remains an open relationship.
3. Check the network before using it. Trace each material consequence to the alternative and to the affected party’s criterion. Ask the provider whether the proposed provision is possible and the affected party whether the criterion and stated effect capture their concern. Inspect missing intermediate steps, double-counted paths and contradictory accounts. Do not repair disagreement by deleting one party. If a cycle matters, bound its time steps or obtain an appropriate model; repeatedly circulating a favorable label supplies no additional evidence.
4. Evaluate one complete alternative at a time. Hold its configuration and initial assumptions fixed. Carry established or conditional results through necessary combinations and alternative means using their stated meanings. A necessary unfulfilled condition blocks the claimed conjunction; an unknown necessary condition leaves that conjunction unsupported unless another condition already defeats it. One sufficient supported route can establish the stated disjunction even when another route remains unknown. If no route is supported and at least one remains unknown, retain the unresolved result; if every modeled route fails, that modeled disjunction fails. Apply the same discipline to external provision: the receiver’s result cannot be established through a provision whose availability is unknown. For contributions, retain the incoming supporting, opposing and unknown grounds together before judging the destination. Do not add signs, count arrows, or promote several weak claims to a strong claim merely because there are several. Distinguish no investigation, an investigated but unknown effect, and opposed grounds.
5. Ask a question that can settle the disputed transition. Present the affected person or qualified source with the actual incoming grounds and criterion: would these conditions suffice, only help, obstruct, or leave this outcome unresolved, and why? Record the answer, its scope and dissent. An acceptable judgement may retain a conflict or say that no conclusion is supported. If an unexpectedly favorable or unfavorable result exposes a missing condition, return to the relationship or source rather than adjust the final label to match expectations.
6. Compare the resulting profiles. Apply :4.3–:4.5 to the same consequences for all alternatives. Keep a supported trade-off separate from an unknown effect that could reverse it. Return the explanation paths with the profile; a diagram is optional. Mark any judgement on which the comparison depends so that the recipient can challenge it.
7. Work backward only when the question requires it. If the recipient asks how several desired conditions could hold together, trace their necessary conditions and candidate sufficient routes backward. Propose a combination of means, ask what incoming conditions would justify each disputed intermediate judgement, then test the whole combination forward under the same assumptions. Set aside a combination with an incompatible condition. Keep a combination with an unsupported decisive transition conditional, naming the missing relationship instead of treating missing evidence as refutation. A failed current combination is not proof that every possible design fails. Do not weaken the recipient’s criterion merely to find a solution.
8. Revise by dependence. When a source or judgement changes, identify the changed relationship, rerun its downstream consequences for affected alternatives, and recheck the comparison. Reopen the boundary if an omitted party or consequence appears. Preserve independent claims and the earlier result with its earlier conditions.

Use ordinary prose categories appropriate to the subject. If a named language or solver is used, declare its version, propagation rules, treatment of unknown and conflicting evidence, and structural restrictions. A solver’s satisfying assignment is a model result, not a commitment by participants or evidence that the arrangement will work.

For an inquiry that also needs to construct and question the underlying actors-and-goals model, the Reference’s goals-and-dependencies walkthrough connects this branch to the inquiry’s purpose, model views, explicit initial assumptions and a return from unexpected results to new source questions. It follows a staffing conflict through a revised allocation and its limited use. The present branch supplies the consequence analysis within that larger inquiry.

PSD.11:4.3 - Construct a consequence account before aggregating

Keep each alternative’s material consequence profile visible. For every relied-on entry, show the relevant subject, meaning, unit or category, condition or scenario, time, source, uncertainty, and missingness. A short parallel description can suffice; use a table when it makes repeated comparisons clearer.

Separate physical or service consequences from how they are valued. A budget estimate, hours of service loss, a probability distribution, and a consent condition do not become interchangeable because they occupy adjacent columns. A lower cost can be compared directly under its scale while a disputed value trade-off remains unresolved.

Where there is a distribution, preserve its event definition and dependence on the alternative and conditions. Expected values alone are insufficient when a tail, threshold, reversibility, or distribution across affected subjects can change the decision. Where no distribution is justified, retain conditional scenarios or bounds.

A missing value is unknown, not zero or equal to the competing alternative. A qualified narrower slice remains usable only with its excluded consequences explicit.

PSD.11:4.4 - Check dependencies and shared burdens

Ask whether consequences share a cause, depend on the same resource, overlap in their accounting, or change under combination. A human–tool arrangement needs a whole-arrangement result; adding a worker’s effect to a tool’s effect can omit coordination loss or count the same resolved case twice.

Use the dependence structure required by the selected model. Do not assume independent failures simply because separate estimates exist. Linearity can justify adding expected contributions without independence, but it does not justify duplicated quantities, unsupported causal contributions, or a joint tail probability.

Inspect whether a claimed dominance survives the common conditions. Different favorable assumptions for different alternatives produce no fair comparison. If a required correspondence or joint model is missing, keep the particular relation unresolved.

PSD.11:4.5 - Apply only an admitted comparison rule

State what “better”, “equivalent”, “dominated”, or “incomparable” means for this use. A coordinatewise comparison may establish that one alternative is no worse on every included coordinate and better on at least one. That conclusion remains limited to those coordinates, conditions, and admissible alternatives; it is not an overall recommendation.

Use the current value account for any compensatory score, priority rule, threshold, or outranking Method. Do not convert ordinal judgements to arithmetic, add a hidden tie-breaker, or adopt a group average to force closure. If several value models remain admissible, show which relations hold throughout them and which depend on the model.

Use A.19.CPM when its profile, comparator, admissibility, and evidence conditions obtain. Its set-valued comparison outcome remains distinct from the application and evidence account, a result episteme, selection, or permission. Use the appropriate direct comparison Method otherwise; a table alone does not assert a CPM application.

Distinguish three important outcomes. Two alternatives can be tied under a rule, incomparable because of supported conflicting consequences, or not yet comparable because a necessary input is missing. Preserve the difference. If no candidate meets a protected condition, return that failure rather than ranking the least nonconforming candidate as acceptable.

PSD.11:4.6 - Return the relation and what would change it

State the exact alternatives and question; common basis; consequence profiles and source limits; applied rule; supported relations; material value disagreement; excluded or unresolved comparisons; and the smallest change that could invalidate the result.

PSD.12 may use this comparison and its evidence for the same configuration and horizon to test robustness. It does not inherit a robustness claim merely from a clean table. An authorized chooser or recommendation practitioner may use the comparison to inform their own judgement. Establish the basis for a resulting programme or WorkPlan separately, and use evidence of actual performance to support any claim about subsequent Work or its effects.

Recognition begins when a rank lacks a recoverable consequence path. Assurance requires qualified direct models, evidence, source reliance, calculation or implementation checks, and the relevant domain protections. A replayable comparison can still be empirically wrong; independent support of its premises remains necessary.