Section 9 · OES Spec
Decision record
Experiments fail as institutional memory when the result exists but the decision does not.
The result and the product decision are related but not identical. The decision block captures what the organization actually did — who decided, on what basis, with what follow-ups. It is what makes OES documents valuable to read years after the fact.
Fields
| Field | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| decision.status | enum | pending, decided, superseded. |
| decision.outcome | enum | ship, do_not_ship, iterate, rerun, rollback, partial_rollout. |
| decision.rationale | string | Why the decision was made. |
| decision.decidedBy | object | Person or team. |
| decision.decidedAt | string (date-time) | Timestamp. |
| decision.followUps | object[] | Tickets, future tests, cleanup tasks. |
| decision.rolloutPlan | object | Ramp or launch plan. |
| decision.productChanges | string | What actually changed after the experiment. |
| decision.businessImpactEstimate | object | Optional modeled annualized impact. |