Reading

Six pieces on what a commitment is, what running one shows that a drawing cannot, where the idea comes from, what it does to software, and what it costs a team to take seriously. In this order if you are starting cold; in any order if you are not.

1. Business runs on commitments Hiring, offers, roadmaps and support are all promises between people — and most of them are never said out loud.
2. Run it before anybody lives in it A drawing is read once. Running it shows whose day it is, who is waiting on whom, and what the design quietly asks of the people in it.
3. Language is how commitments get made Speech acts, conditions of satisfaction, and the conversation for action — where this comes from, and the objection worth taking seriously.
4. What it does to software Data models track payloads; commitment models track who owes what to whom. DEMO, ActionWorkflow, agent protocols, and what changes in a schema.
5. What it costs and what it buys Fewer stalls, clearer ownership, less rework — and the honest account of what goes wrong when this is imposed rather than offered.
6. The vocabulary Thirty-one terms, defined the way this notation uses them: request, offer, decline, revoke, conditions of satisfaction, breakdown.