Approval Without Paralysis: Decision Gates That Actually Work

{
  "id": "ams-012",
  "title": "Approval Without Paralysis: Decision Gates That Actually Work",
  "hook": "Approvals are not control. They are latency. Real control comes from clear gates, data, and reversible decisions.",
  "idea": "SAP AMS needs fewer approvals, but stronger ones. Each gate exists to answer one hard question — fast — using evidence, not opinion.",
  "sap_problem": {
    "what_goes_wrong": [
      "Everyone approves, nobody owns the outcome",
      "Emergency paths become the default",
      "CAB meetings replace engineering judgment",
      "Risk is discussed, not bounded"
    ]
  },
  "decision_gates": [
    {
      "gate": "Triage Gate",
      "question": "Who owns this and what is the next concrete action?",
      "inputs_required": [
        "Business impact statement",
        "Evidence snapshot (errors, objects, time window)",
        "Work type (incident/problem/change)"
      ],
      "output": "Named owner + next step + update time"
    },
    {
      "gate": "Change Gate",
      "question": "Is this change safe enough to run now?",
      "inputs_required": [
        "Blast radius (processes, countries, interfaces)",
        "Test evidence (what was tested, what was not)",
        "Rollback plan (time to reverse)"
      ],
      "output": "Approve / delay / reroute to standard change"
    },
    {
      "gate": "Risk Gate",
      "question": "What can go wrong and how fast can we recover?",
      "inputs_required": [
        "Failure modes",
        "Detection signals",
        "Recovery steps and owner"
      ],
      "output": "Go with safeguards or stop"
    },
    {
      "gate": "Problem Gate",
      "question": "Are we actually removing the cause?",
      "inputs_required": [
        "RCA with evidence",
        "Prevention action",
        "Verification plan"
      ],
      "output": "Accept fix or send back for deeper work"
    }
  ],
  "rules": [
    "No meeting if inputs are missing — the gate stays closed.",
    "Every approval creates accountability, not cover.",
    "If a decision cannot be reversed quickly, the bar is higher."
  ],
  "automation": {
    "copilot_moves": [
      "Check completeness of gate inputs automatically.",
      "Highlight missing or weak evidence.",
      "Estimate rollback time and risk based on history."
    ],
    "outputs": [
      "Gate-ready decision pack",
      "Clear approve/deny recommendation with rationale"
    ]
  },
  "why_this_is_faster_and_safer": [
    "Decisions are made once, not debated repeatedly.",
    "Risk is explicit and bounded.",
    "Approvals stop being political shields."
  ],
  "anti_patterns_to_kill": [
    "Approving based on seniority",
    "Emergency labels without evidence",
    "Approvals with no rollback thinking"
  ],
  "metrics_that_expose_friction": [
    "Decision latency per gate",
    "Percent of approvals with complete evidence",
    "Rollback execution success rate"
  ],
  "design_question": [
    "Which approvals reduce risk — and which only reduce responsibility?"
  ],
  "meta": {
    "schema": "dkharlanau.dataset.byte",
    "schema_version": "1.1",
    "dataset": "ams",
    "source_project": "cv-ai",
    "source_path": "ams/ams-012.json",
    "generated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "creator": {
      "name": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau",
      "role": "SAP Lead",
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "attribution": {
      "attribution_required": true,
      "preferred_citation": "Dzmitryi Kharlanau (SAP Lead). Dataset bytes: https://dkharlanau.github.io"
    },
    "license": {
      "name": "",
      "spdx": "",
      "url": ""
    },
    "links": {
      "website": "https://dkharlanau.github.io",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "contact": {
      "preferred": "linkedin",
      "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkharlanau"
    },
    "canonical_url": "https://dkharlanau.github.io/datasets/ams/ams-012.json",
    "created_at_utc": "2026-02-03T14:33:32+00:00",
    "updated_at_utc": "2026-02-03T15:29:02+00:00",
    "provenance": {
      "source_type": "chat_export_extraction",
      "note": "Extracted and curated by Dzmitryi Kharlanau; enriched for attribution and crawler indexing."
    },
    "entity_type": "ams_byte",
    "entity_subtype": "",
    "summary": "Approvals are not control. They are latency. Real control comes from clear gates, data, and reversible decisions."
  }
}