SYSE.24:4.3 - Describe every arrangement with the same questions
The following eight questions form the common comparison set. Answer a question only as far as it can change this comparison, but use the same basis for every option.
| Question | Required content |
|---|---|
| What result will exist or occur? | The result kind, identity or designator, acceptance claims, receiving use, configuration, horizon, and completion or availability condition. |
| Who does what? | Agents that may perform the named Work, applicable Methods, assignments and authority when relied on, and the Systems, data, tools, facilities, materials, and services participating in that Work. |
| How will the result be produced, performed, transferred, or made available? | Proposed production, transfer, custody, ownership, licence, access, provision, acceptance, or other relations. Use the specialist result that governs each relation when it changes the choice. |
| How will it fit and remain identifiable? | Interfaces, integration Work, configuration identity, effectivity, migration, interoperability, and any earlier engineering decision that an interface or integration failure would reopen. |
| What supports reliance? | Provider or builder capability, evidence for acceptance, assurance needs, uncertainty, unsupported claims, and one feasible next probe when it could change the choice. |
| What happens after first use? | Support, maintenance, updates, data and knowledge custody, replaceability, recovery, exit, and response to provider or technology change. |
| What capability changes? | Capability gained, retained, displaced, or made dependent on tools or providers for the named later Work. Use E.23.CDI or the Human Capability Development DPF when a capability-development decision becomes current. |
| What resources and consequences matter? | Relevant examples include time, money, scarce attention, capacity, risk, burden, benefit, and harm. Keep specialist results and affected Systems visible rather than folding them into one unexplained score. |
An unknown answer can remain unknown when it cannot change the choice. If it can reverse the choice, record it as the comparison defect and either obtain the specialist result or make it the subject of one bounded probe.