Worked Example: the Campaign Register (marketing-native)
Deliverable of: the module package, artifact 5 (added after the v2 review noted both prior examples were politics-free solo athletes, while the first cohort runs marketing). This example has humans with interests in it on purpose; the power question is answered honestly, not cosmetically. Names are generic; the shape is drawn from how marketing functions actually fail. Built against: canon v3.3.2 (2026-08-29).
Filled in as the worksheet would be:
Pain (0), chosen by frequency x cost from three candidates:
- "Campaigns launch late and nobody can say where the slip happened" (weekly-ish, high cost) — CHOSEN.
- "Creative revisions loop endlessly" (weekly, medium: partly an ideation-space problem, structure only helps the handoff edges).
- "We repeat audience experiments" (monthly, high: a second structure for a later month; do not ontologize the whole function at once).
Missing noun (1): the Campaign, as a register row with STATES — today "a campaign" lives in a deck, three Slack threads, and the media buyer's head. Place: the campaign register. ID scheme: minted codes, prefix CAMP- (CAMP-031 is one token in the standup, in a Slack thread, and in the learning it produces; campaigns are cited across people and months, so a natural key does not carry).
| Field | Legal values / type | The DECISION this field changes |
|---|---|---|
| Stage | brief (SLA 2d) -> creative (SLA 5d) -> approval (SLA 2d) -> staged (SLA 1d) -> live -> learning; each stage DECLARES its SLA as part of the ontology (the loudness mechanism depends on it; an undeclared load-bearing field is the exact defect the worksheet hunts) | which team's clock is ticking; where a slip is visible |
| Stage owner | ONE name (auto from stage) | who is asked, instead of a channel-wide "any update?" |
| Stage entered | date (auto) | a stage older than its SLA turns the row loud |
| Launch date | date | what gets cut when creative slips: scope, not date, or date, deliberately |
| Learning | free text, REQUIRED to close | whether the next brief repeats this campaign's mistake |
Notes: five fields, each defended; "budget", "channel mix" and six other candidates were cut in review (they change no weekly decision; they live in the brief document the row links to). Legal states are a CLOSED list; "sort of in approval" is not a state.
Verb on a clock (2): Monday 10:00, fifteen minutes, the standup walks the register EXCEPTIONS FIRST: any row past its stage SLA, any row whose owner changed, any row closing without a Learning. Rows on track are not discussed (compliance silent). Owner: the marketing lead.
One real row (3): "CAMP-031 | Ramadan promo | creative (entered Mon, SLA 5d) | owner: Dina | launch Mar 3 | learning: —". Instruction test, tomorrow's whole instruction: "CAMP-031 is 2 days over creative SLA — Dina, cut scope or move launch, decide by Thursday."
Empty state (4): all rows in-SLA: the standup closes in three minutes and that is a success. (If it stays three minutes for a quarter, the standup merges into the weekly team meeting: the ceremony-shrinks rule, stated at birth.)
Enforcement (5), self-serve first: the row is the PREREQUISITE for spend: the media buyer will not stage a campaign without a register row in "staged" (coupling to something people already need — the strongest self-serve gate, no engineering). Same-day noticer: the stage-SLA turns the row loud in the channel automatically (a built-in automation of the tool hosting the register). Fleet-gate candidacy: a linting agent that catches rows closing without a Learning — requested from the pre-committed budget, but the register runs without it.
The power question, answered honestly: the CREATIVE LEAD loses schedule slack that is currently invisible (today, "it's with creative" hides a week of buffer they use to juggle other work). The DESIGN AGENCY loses the ambiguity that lets revision rounds go unbilled. Predicted response: creative pushes for longer SLAs during design — ACCEPT that negotiation at the workshop, because an SLA they co-set is one they will honor, and an SLA imposed on them will be gamed with "entered creative" date fudging. The register makes the marketing lead's OWN slips visible to the CMO too; the firewall matters to the author, not only the team.
Gardening (6): the marketing lead amends; review cadence monthly in the standup's last slot. Kill condition: if exceptions stay zero for a quarter, the register's SLA fields retire into the project tool and the standup merges away. First expected amendment (predicted at design time): the approval stage will need splitting into internal/legal once the first compliance-heavy campaign hits.
What makes this example different from lifting and marathon, on purpose: every field redistributes visibility among people with their own interests; enforcement is coupling and negotiation, not a coach's glance; and the structure's author is ALSO under new scrutiny it creates. That is what management-domain structures are like, and why the firewall and the power question are load-bearing course components, not politeness.