Facts in the Baseline
Every location, provider, service, contract term, obligation and spend figure carries a grade, so you can see which parts of the record are proven and which are still inference.
The NGX Evidence Standard
NarrowGateX does not hide uncertainty. It makes uncertainty visible.
Every fact in a Technology Baseline carries one of five grades. The point is not that everything reaches the top one. The point is that you can tell which facts did, and decide accordingly.
The five grades
What each one means, and why it exists.
- 01Verified
- Evidence directly supports the record.A document says so, and the document is attached to the line.
- 02Supported
- Several signals make the record credible, but it has not reached Verified.Believable is not the same as proven, and the difference belongs on the page.
- 03Assumed
- Believed to be true, without evidence sufficient to support it.An assumption that is labeled can be checked. One that is not becomes a fact by repetition.
- 04Missing
- Information the record needs is absent.A blank filled with a plausible value is the most expensive kind of error.
- 05Conflicting
- The available evidence disagrees with itself.Two sources that contradict each other is a finding, not a rounding problem.
Where it applies
Both sides of every comparison.
Market evidence
Observations behind a benchmark are graded the same way. Evidence about the market is evidence, and it is held to the same test as evidence about you.
The comparisons themselves
A comparison inherits the weaker of its two sides. A proven position measured against an assumed rate produces an assumed comparison, not a proven one.
What follows from it
The rules this creates are the useful part.
A grading vocabulary is only worth having if it changes what gets published. These are the consequences it forces.
- A grade is never raised to make a picture look better. Wimbl will not fill a gap for the same reason.
- Grades do not average. Five Assumed facts do not add up to a Verified one, and a composite score would let them appear to.
- Where evidence disagrees, both sides are shown. Conflicting is a finding, not a rounding problem.
- Where something is Missing, it appears in the deliverable rather than being left out of it.
- A figure that rests on an assumption is presented as a bound, never as a bare number.
Being precise about our own maturity
The standard, and what the platform automates today.
This is the standard NarrowGateX holds its work to, and it applies to every engagement now. It is not a claim that the platform computes all five grades automatically everywhere in the product today.
Some of it is automated and some of it is applied by the people doing the work, and we are extending the platform to carry the whole standard. Telling you which is which costs us nothing except the ability to imply more than is true, and a page arguing against overstated certainty is a poor place to start overstating ours.
See it applied to a constructed estate, including the part that could not be verified:a sample Technology Baseline.
See what holds up in your own estate.
A Technology Baseline establishes what is true, and states plainly what is not yet evidenced.