Score exposure, not optimism
Assess criticality, technical complexity, blast radius, familiarity, rollback confidence, timing sensitivity, and resource coverage using consistent definitions.
Treat mandatory controls as gates
Peer review, validated recovery, explicit rollback criteria, representative testing, monitoring, security review, post-change ownership, and collision checks should not disappear inside an average.
Allow conditional not-applicable decisions
Some controls depend on the change. N/A should require a conscious determination and should not be available for mandatory gates.
Produce a decision record
State the risk score, completion percentage, open mandatory gaps, approval decision, implementation summary, and rollback plan.
Apply the method
The related Greywake application exposes the inputs, assumptions, and output structure described in this article.