Governance

Governance decisions

A governance decision is any configuration choice that changes how the data is processed or modeled. ServiceMatch treats these as first-class objects with a lifecycle — not settings that drift, but decisions that are made, shown, revised, and overridden in the open. The record they land on is described in The decision record; this page covers the decisions themselves.

Decision types

Type	What it decides
Source mapping & role	How a discovery export’s columns map to canonical fields, and what the source is allowed to do (discover / enrich / feed applications).
Precedence	Which source owns which attribute when sources disagree.
Transform & normalization rules	How raw values are cleaned and standardized before merge.
Classification rules	What evidence places a device in which CI class.
Exclusions & quarantines	What is deliberately kept out of the import, and why.
Service-model decisions	Accepted stakeholder claims, device placements, adoption-stage promotions.
Operator overrides	Human judgment superseding any automated result.

The lifecycle

Decisions are authored as effective— with author, rationale, and evidence attached — then remain permanently revisable. The decision list shows each one with its impact, and it distinguishes the author-time estimate from the live count against the current dataset, because those are different facts and pretending otherwise erodes trust. An override doesn't delete the decision it beats; both stay visible, in order, attributable.

Decisions accumulate into a cadence

Because every choice is on the record, the daily operating loop has a concrete surface: new source drops are validated and quarantined on arrival, drift between snapshots is detected, and the operator's standing review is a pass over new decisions and pending items — minutes, not workshops.

Design Principle

Configuration that isn't on the record is tribal knowledge with a login. The decision list is what makes an estate operable by whoever comes next.