Aglet

Prioritize recovery of lost decision context before making changes

Context recovery is valuable when it protects an important or hard-to-reverse decision, but not every missing note should halt work. Prioritization should weigh decision risk and current progress, then choose recovery, provisional continuation, or a bounded new decision. Recover context first when an unexamined assumption could make a costly or irreversible change.

Decide where the work belongs

  1. Assess reversal and reach

    Identify systems, customers, teams, dependencies, and future work affected by the unknown rationale. Note whether current work can be safely reversed and which assumptions would make an incorrect continuation costly.

  2. Compare recovery options

    Consider source review, a short stakeholder check, a new decision record, or proceeding with an explicit assumption. State what each option can establish and who has authority to confirm it.

  3. Set a context queue decision

    Choose recovery priority, owner, and stop or revisit trigger. If work continues provisionally, record the assumption and a point before irreversible change where context must be confirmed. Record the point at which a provisional assumption must be replaced by a confirmed decision.

What to carry forward

The output is a priority decision based on reversal cost, dependency reach, uncertainty, and safe progress. Stop when context recovery or provisional continuation has an owner and boundary; do not block low-risk work merely to perfect historical narrative. Keep low-risk progress moving while preserving the unresolved rationale as a separate decision task.

Keep the decision with the work.

Use a Work Item in Aglet to record the problem, the evidence you have, and the next decision. Add an owner and priority, then keep updates in the discussion so the next person can follow the reasoning.

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