PSD.15:1 - Problem frame

Use this when a practice needs to decide which problem-structuring and decision-support Methods to retain, change or withdraw from its offering for future engagements. A familiar workshop no longer covers a recurring participation difficulty. A new analytical technique seems promising, but its input assumptions differ from those of the existing repertoire. Follow-up exposes a repeatedly broken join between a material correction and the recommendation that should use it.

Start with the recurring difficulty and the repertoire decision: which way should remain available for which situation, which proposed change deserves a trial, and which use should be narrowed or withdrawn? A better source or a qualified failure can justify a small change; the practice need not redesign its entire repertoire.

Problem structuring and decision support is the wider practice. This pattern governs development and maintenance of its reusable ways of working. A repertoire here is a bounded set of Methods and separately identified candidate accounts with usable conditions and reasons, not a catalogue of schools, a software inventory, a training curriculum or an assertion about the whole discipline.

The gain is a practical choice for the next engagement: a practitioner can recover what a Method does, where it fits, what evidence supports that use, what alternative remains, and when to ask for another result. A small repertoire can be better than a comprehensive list that hides unsupported transfers.

Do not use this pattern merely to choose an adequate existing Method for one engagement; use PSD.6. Use PSD.14 to respond to a changed premise in one current recommendation, and PSD.16 for a conflict in the current work arrangement. Enter this pattern only when that evidence can affect the decision to retain or change a reusable Method, applicability claim or repertoire offering. Changing a document, tool, source locator or one local performance does not by itself create a new Method.