Forthcoming

Decision Assurance.

How to Make Decisions You Can Prove Were Right.

The book that names the discipline — and the first applied volume of the Emergent Intelligence Library. Forthcoming from Andrew Guitarte via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

What it is

A discipline, told as a walk — not a textbook.

Most of the calls that shape an enterprise vanish the moment they are made: no record of who decided, no trace of why, no proof the decision was sound. We fixed this for our products a century ago. We never fixed it for the most expensive thing any organization makes — its decisions.

This is the book that argues we should, and shows how. It traces assurance through manufacturing, aerospace, information security, and audit, then extends it to the decision itself. It introduces the Decision Assurance Levels, the two ledgers, the decision flight simulator, and the role of the decision auditor — and it grades the author's own tool honestly, including the hypothesis he pre-registered and watched fail.

What you will take away.

Separate the decision from the outcome

Why a good decision can have a bad outcome — and how to keep hindsight from re-grading the past.

Right-size the rigor

The Decision Assurance Levels: how to match the assurance to the cost of being wrong, the way aviation grades its software.

Build the record

Governance-as-code, the immutable assurance record, and how to make capturing a decision nearly free.

Rehearse the future

The decision dependency graph and the decision flight simulator: we don't predict, we rehearse.

Keep the human in command

Why the evidence says the human should decide — and how assurance makes that decision defensible.

Audit the auditor

The emerging role of the decision auditor, and the honest test for grading any decision tool, including this author's.

The series

The first applied volume of the Emergent Intelligence Library.

Emergent Intelligence is the house — a discipline for deciding well in a complex world. Decision Assurance is its first applied discipline. The forthcoming capstone, Emergent Intelligence, carries the theory.

  1. The LeanIX Payoff

    The series predecessor — a number-one New Release in Information Management.

  2. Decision Assurance Forthcoming

    The first applied discipline: how to make decisions you can prove were right.

  3. Emergent Intelligence

    The forthcoming capstone theory volume.

"Somebody must audit the auditor."The epigraph of Decision Assurance

The book is forthcoming.

It is not yet available for sale. If you lead governance at an enterprise and want to be told when it publishes — or to explore the Charter cohort before it does — start a conversation.