Causance

EVALUATION METHOD

Make a clear decision about software change.

Don’t start by assuming you need Causance. Give installed tools, composed controls and internal-build alternatives full credit. Then test whether a material authority or evidence gap actually remains—and whether closing it is worth the total acceptance burden.

Evaluation scope. This is a screening method, not an active customer evaluation offer, a certification test, or a claim that Causance wins by definition.

THE ENTERPRISE DECISION

Connect the technical question to the operating decision.

Start with an accountable owner, a bounded scope and the evidence needed to decide. Technical capability matters alongside the work required to adopt and operate it.

Decision and scope

Which software-change condition matters, who is accountable for it, and which service, repository or lifecycle boundary is in scope?

Evidence and acceptance

What would demonstrate a material gap? Agree what supports acting, stopping or seeking more evidence before examining a proposed solution.

Value and operating responsibility

Compare the remaining problem with procurement, security review, integration, ongoing operations and maintenance. Make the ownership and acceptance burden explicit.

BASELINE FIRST

Make the incumbent case as strong as it really is.

Source control, CI/CD, identity, policy, security, cloud controls, approvals, GRC, observability, agent controls and internal processes may already solve some or all of the problem. Do not omit those capabilities to create artificial whitespace.

CURRENT ENVIRONMENTGive installed, composed and internal-build controls full credit.
CHANGEDefine the consequential condition.

Identify the exact software condition and scope being evaluated.

CONTROLSMap what already exists.

Record what current systems do and the burden they impose.

OUTCOMESPredefine the result states.

Agree success, failure, no material gap and inconclusive before testing.

BURDENCount the whole acceptance cost.

Include procurement, integration, switching, operations, maintenance, governance and evidence work.

FIVE SCREENING QUESTIONS

Test the authority-and-evidence contract, not the category label.

Each screen is deliberately broad. Passing or failing one is not a Causance advantage by itself. Equivalent capability in the current environment gets full credit.

Authority-state separation

Is authority explicit and separate from workflow progress, task completion, merge state, deployment state or agent success?

Evidence-dependent eligibility

Can stale, missing, superseded, conflicting, malformed or inapplicable evidence force revalidation or block progression?

Reconstructable provenance

Can a reviewer reconstruct why the change was eligible at the relevant decision point rather than infer governance from final state or logs alone?

Recovery continuity

Does failure and recovery preserve the relevant authority/evidence meaning or explicitly require it to be re-established?

Substitution portability

Can the authority and evidence contract remain intelligible when a provider, model, tool or implementation layer changes?

EXERCISE NORMAL AND FAILURE STATE

Don’t evaluate only the happy path.

A credible comparison should include the cases that make authority and evidence difficult: stale inputs, wrong scope, conflicting sources, rejected review, consumed authority, interrupted execution, changed providers and recovery after failure.

SCENARIOEXPECTED QUESTIONVALID RESULT
NORMAL

Can the environment make the decision and reconstruct why it was supportable?

eligible / held / inconclusive
DEGRADED

Does missing, stale or inapplicable evidence produce an explicit fail-closed state?

held / rejected / revalidate
RECOVERY

Can the environment preserve history and require fresh conditions before later action?

reconstruct / revalidate / stop

VALID OUTCOMES

The right answer may be “don’t buy another layer.”

The evaluation is only credible if stopping is an allowed result.

ACTA material gap remains.
  • The gap survives full credit to existing controls.
  • It matters to the organization’s software-change risk or operating model.
  • A proposed approach closes it at acceptable total burden.
  • The result remains source-bounded and reproducible.
STOPNo incremental layer is justified.
  • No material gap remains.
  • Existing or internal-build controls are sufficient.
  • The evidence is inconclusive.
  • The acceptance burden exceeds the value of incremental control.

INSPECT BEFORE YOU COMPARE

Use the mechanism pages as the object of evaluation.

AuthorityInspect the permission/progress separation first.EvidenceInspect applicability, freshness, verification and history.Failure & recoveryInspect degraded state and recovery boundaries.InquiryDiscuss a material enterprise use case without sending sensitive information.