Decision Rights by Planning Horizon

From WFM Labs

Part of the Planning Week chain · previous: Operating Principles for Work Placement · next: The Placement Gate Decision rights by planning horizon is the method by which a planning room writes down who decides what in a workforce function, as a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) whose rows are decision domains at each planning horizon and whose first rule, printed above the table, separates the method from the decision: the function is accountable for the method and responsible for the advice; the node owner is accountable for the decision. The page also carries the four standing forums that hold those rights and the rule that a decline is legitimate and is recorded with its price as routine. The page produces the RACI by horizon (T3, identifiers RACI-nnn) and the four forum cards, and is worked in a session with Wiki:Packs/GRPI-T Instantiation (CP-WFM-013), whose RACI block carries both the table and the forum cards.

The first rule

The global ROC is accountable for the method and responsible for the advice; the node owner is accountable for the decision. The global ROC is the shared service that owns the methodology for forecasting, scheduling, real-time steering and work placement across every node; the node owner is the owner of the body of work placed at a node, never the operator of the node. The rule is printed above the table rather than inside it because every row is an instance of it, and because the arguments a planning function has with its operation are almost always arguments about which half of the rule a decision falls under. A forecast is method; a hiring plan built on it is a decision. A scored placement proposal is advice; the placement is a decision. The rule does not make the function weaker: a function accountable for method owns the definitions, the instrument, the calendar and the record, which is more authority than most planning functions hold, and it is authority no other body wants.

The rule follows the general principle that decision rights should sit with the party that holds the knowledge the decision needs, and that where the knowledge is specific to a place or a book it is cheaper to move the right than the knowledge.[1] The node owner holds the specific knowledge of the book; the function holds the general knowledge of the method. The practitioner literature on decision roles makes the same separation operational: name one party who has the decision, distinguish those who recommend and those who must agree, and record who performs what follows.[2] The RACI on this page keeps the classical four letters because the practice pages Workforce Management Governance and Change Management and Workforce Financial Governance already use them, and adds one discipline those pages leave implicit: exactly one A per row.

Domains by horizon

The horizon is the row because placement runs at every horizon with a different object: 12–36 months (network and supply-seat design), annual (the objectives themselves and the budget envelope), quarterly and monthly (allocation and clearing), weekly and daily (the forecast lock and the schedule of record), intraday and real time (steering within rules), and intake events at any horizon (a new client, a product change). The bodies are five: the global ROC (method), the node owners (decision), commercial (the pen on offers), finance (the envelope), and the change-control board (routing, platform configuration, contract changes). A row with two accountable bodies is two rows written as one, and the room splits it.

ID Horizon Decision domain Global ROC Node owner Commercial Finance Change-control board Record kept
RACI-001 Quarterly / monthly Allocation and clearing: moves and requisitions at lock-and-decide R (the surplus and deficit view; the feasible-move set; the binding constraint named) A (signs or declines, with the price recorded) I C (cost of hire against cost of move) I the plan of record; the decision record with the binding constraint named
RACI-002 12–36 months Network and supply-seat design R (computes, prices, records) A C (offer constraints) C (envelope) I the landscape; the counterfactual record
RACI-003 Annual The objectives register: its order and the dials R (proposes the ordered list) A (the outcome owners, jointly) C C I the objectives register, reordered with a signature
RACI-004 Annual The budget envelope by node R (the headcount plan in the budget's own units) C C A I the plan of record reconciled to the budget
RACI-005 Annual Partner renewals on the shared instrument R (the instrument; the comparability clause) C A (the pen) C C the contract; the renewal calendar as a constraint entry
RACI-006 Weekly / daily The forecast lock and the schedule of record A for the method; R for the output C (the book's constraints) I I I the lock calendar; the forecast vintage
RACI-007 Intraday / real time Steering within the rules A for the rules; R for the actions C (agent-level exceptions) I I I the incident and event ledgers; the catch rate
RACI-008 Any Routing, platform configuration, contract changes, the migration schedule R (the specification) C C I A the change log; the confirmation
RACI-009 Any The standard, the principles, the definitions register A as the convener of the council, which approves C C C R for change control the standard's change history; the register's versions
RACI-010 Any (intake events) A placement question through the gate R (six tests, five outcomes, the counterfactual) A C where an offer binds C where a price is paid I the gate output page; the counterfactual record

Two rows deserve a sentence. RACI-006 and RACI-007 are the rows where the function is accountable, and they are accountable for method (the lock calendar, the steering rules), never for the operation's outcome; the schedule of record is the function's output and the service level is the node owner's outcome, and the shared-accountability scorecard on Instantiating the GRPI-T Framework keeps that distinction. RACI-004 was one row with RACI-003 in every draft the method has seen, and the room splits it because the objectives' order and the envelope's size are different decisions with different accountable bodies; a room that leaves them joined has written a row in which finance and the node owners are both accountable, and neither is.

Declines recorded with their price, as routine

A node owner may decline a proposal the function has computed and priced. The decline is legitimate: the rule gives the owner the decision, and a function that treats a decline as a failure has misread its own first rule. What the method requires is that the decline be recorded with its price, and that the recording be routine rather than on request. The record is the counterfactual: what the proposal would have cost or saved, what the owner decided instead, and the reason in the owner's words. The broker pattern names the failure this prevents: trades declined for local reasons, never recorded, so the cost of refusal is invisible and the fungibility dividend never materializes. Routine recording is the live choice inside decision D-05, and the argument for it is arithmetic: a record kept on request has gaps exactly where the cost of not moving is highest, because those are the declines no one asks about.

The recorded price is a number and carries its grade ([M] measured, [C] computed, [E] estimated, [A] asserted, as Human Gates and Number Grades defines them); a decline priced at [E] is recorded at [E], with its range, and is not sharpened afterward.

The four forums

The rights above are held in four standing forums, each described on a forum card with four fields: scope, participants, cadence and critical success factor. Four is deliberately few: one change-control board, not one per platform; the placement forum as a step in the capacity cycle rather than a meeting beside it.

Forum Scope Participants Cadence Critical success factor
The placement forum (the capacity cycle's lock-and-decide stage) signs or declines the month's moves and requisitions and any placement question that ran the gate; a decline is recorded with its price the node owners; the global ROC as method; finance for the envelope monthly at the cycle's decision stage, after pencils-down; on intake events the counterfactual record exists whether or not the owner takes the proposal
The council approves the standard, the principles, the definitions register and the objectives register's order the function's leader; the seats; the definitions register's owner; a finance partner; the operator of the service-center node for the node taxonomy monthly one standard, one vocabulary; nothing published without an owner and an expiry
The change-control board routing, platform configuration, contract changes, the migration schedule; collisions between them chaired by the placement seat; the standardization seat; technology; the partner-contracts manager monthly, and on request for a migration event a portfolio seat can staff schedulers; no one changes the method without the board
Budget season sets the dials: the objectives register reordered with a signature; the envelope by node the outcome owners jointly; finance; the global ROC annual, with quarterly re-forecast checkpoints the dials are set, not inherited

The placement forum is lock-and-decide, not a separate meeting: the Capacity Planning Cycle's fifth stage is where the locked plan of record meets the owners who sign it, and a separate meeting separates the placement decision from the requisition it displaces. Its cadence is the sales-and-operations-planning cadence discipline Interconnected Workforce Management records and Capacity Planning Cycle runs on business-day milestones, which is why the forum's date is a step in a published calendar and not a slot someone requests. Vendor governance has its own placement of standard-setting, measurement and enforcement across parties, on Vendor Governance Placement; the forums above do not restate it, and RACI-005 points at it.

How the rights are adopted in the room

The RACI is drafted before the week with the first rule and the ten domains above, and the room on Day 2 morning, after the org option and the role cards, takes decision D-05 as one act: the first rule; the RACI as drafted or amended; declines recorded as routine; the four forums with the placement forum as lock-and-decide. Every row is read aloud with its A named, and a row that draws two answers is split. The record-kept column is filled before a row is accepted. The forum cards are filled from the role cards' forums field, so a forum whose participants are on no card will not sit. Where the org option changes in the validation circuit, the bodies are re-cut there and the rule does not move.

Worked example

The function is a workforce planning function formed from three heritages, roughly 40–50 planners [E], at Level 2 (Foundational) as a band [A]. On Day 2 morning (Tue 21 Apr 2026), after D-03 and D-04, the room takes D-05: the first rule, the ten rows above, routine recording, the four forums. RACI-003 and RACI-004 arrive as one row and are split in the room. The first forum sits in the June cycle, which decision D-08 sets as the first cycle on one calendar: pencils-down at BD+7, Tue 9 Jun 2026; the placement forum between BD+8 and BD+10, Wed 10 Jun – Fri 12 Jun 2026. At that sitting one clearing move, the transfer of a deficit in one book to a surplus in another, is declined by the receiving book's node owner with the recorded price "training lead time exceeds the phase 2 date; requisition instead" [A], and the decline is the first row of the counterfactual record. The forum cards go to the validation circuit, closing Fri 8 May 2026, with the RACI.

The artifact this page produces

RACI by horizon (T3), one row per decision domain, exactly one A per row. One filled example row:

ID Horizon Decision domain Global ROC Node owner Commercial Finance Change-control board Record kept
RACI-001 Quarterly / monthly moves and requisitions at lock-and-decide R A I C I the plan of record; the decision record with the binding constraint named

The four forum cards are recorded on the same sheet, one card per forum with the four fields. Produced in a working session with Wiki:Packs/GRPI-T Instantiation (CP-WFM-013); the filled set is part of blueprint v0.1.

What would change this

The page's central claim is that separating method from decision, with one accountable body per row and declines recorded as routine, produces decisions that hold and a counterfactual record that is complete where it matters. The observation that would overturn the first half is a function that holds the decision as well as the method, over more than one annual cycle, without the node owners routing around it; if placement decisions taken by the planning function are accepted and executed by the owners of the books, the rule is a preference and not a dependency. The observation that would overturn the second half is a counterfactual record kept on request that, audited a year later, is found to carry the high-cost declines as completely as the low-cost ones.

How this connects

Maturity Model Position

Documented decision rights are the Level 3 form on the governance pages this page defers to; the monthly forum with a RACI for every major domain is their Level 4 form. This page places the whole table at the transition from Level 2 to Level 3, because a planning week can write it in a morning, and reserves for Level 4 only the rows an engine will run (RACI-007 and RACI-010 with recompute on triggers). Four scales on this wiki use the word "level"; Planning Week for a Workforce Function states which is which. This page uses the maturity levels.

See Also

References

  1. ↑ Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1992). "Specific and General Knowledge, and Organizational Structure". In Werin, L., & Wijkander, H. (eds.), Contract Economics. Blackwell, 251–274.
  2. ↑ Rogers, P., & Blenko, M. W. (2006). "Who Has the D? How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance". Harvard Business Review 84 (1), 52–61.
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