Principle
Stage irreversible commitments
Commit in increments when learning is valuable and delay is affordable.
When it fits
- When a strategy contains decisions that are costly or impossible to reverse while key uncertainty may resolve later.
When to avoid it
- Scenarios and robust-decision tools organize uncertainty; they do not predict the future. Preserve governance, evidence and explicit review triggers.
Why it matters
Separate reversible from irreversible parts, commit only what is needed now, and attach later gates to evidence. Account for the cost of waiting as well as the value of learning.
An example
Lease capacity for the first year and delay a custom data-center commitment until usage and margin are better known.
Check your result
The plan preserves learning without pretending delay is free.
Keep this limit in mind
- Scenarios and robust-decision tools organize uncertainty; they do not predict the future. Preserve governance, evidence and explicit review triggers.
Connected ideas
Use beforePreserve options when information is coming soon
Evidence and sources
Supports
Robust Decision Making uses exploratory analysis to stress-test strategies over many plausible futures and seek strategies that perform acceptably across uncertainty rather than optimizing a single prediction.
Full RDM can require substantial modeling; lightweight cards should not claim equivalent rigor.
Robust Decision Making (RDM) · Abstract and method overview