The organizational software layer that instruments coordination quality — detecting where decisions churn, ownership collapses, and agreements fail to hold in practice.
Direct Answer
Decision Reliability Infrastructure (DRI) is a category of organizational software that instruments the coordination layer — the layer where groups of people turn strategic direction into aligned action. It detects whether decisions actually closed, whether they are holding under pressure, and where structural coordination failures are forming before they cascade.
Every organization runs on three layers. The strategy layer is where direction is set. The execution layer is where work gets done. Between them sits the coordination layer — where groups of people turn direction into aligned action.
The strategy layer has sophisticated tools. The execution layer has project management, task tracking, and workflow software. The coordination layer — where decisions get made, trade-offs get negotiated, scope gets defined or deferred — has almost none. It is the least instrumented layer in the enterprise.
Decision Reliability Infrastructure instruments this layer. Not to automate decisions or replace judgment, but to make coordination quality visible: which decisions closed with explicit owners and captured rationale, which are cycling without resolution, where dissent was suppressed rather than surfaced, and where scope is drifting because an assumption changed but nobody propagated the update.
The name is deliberate. Decision because the unit of analysis is decisions, not meetings or tasks. Reliability because the question is whether decisions hold under pressure — not whether they were made. Infrastructure because this is designed to be a permanent layer in the enterprise stack, not a project-level tool or episodic intervention.
The analogy from engineering: you would not run a production system without observability and call that acceptable risk. The decision layer carries at least as much organizational risk. When production degrades, you have alerts. When the coordination layer degrades — when the same decisions keep reopening, when accountability is diffusing, when scope is drifting — there is currently no signal at all.
Decision Reliability Infrastructure surfaces four types of structural signals:
Whether a decision was stated explicitly, with a named owner, surfaced dissent, and captured rationale. A decision that lacks any of these four signals is fragile — it will hold until the first moment of pressure, then reopen.
Whether decisions that appeared closed are being relitigated. Normal turbulence looks like churn. Structural friction repeats. The difference tells you whether you have a one-time team issue or a systemic coordination problem.
Where accountability is diffusing because no single person owns the outcome. The DRI model names an owner. Decision Reliability Infrastructure detects whether the decision that owner is accountable for was actually made.
Where scope or assumptions have shifted but the change has not propagated through the relevant teams. Two teams building in incompatible directions because a shared assumption changed and nobody updated the relevant parties.
Decision Reliability Infrastructure is not a meeting recorder. Meeting recorders transcribe what was said. DRI detects what structurally happened — or failed to happen.
It is not a project management tool. Project management tracks whether work got done. DRI tracks whether the agreement underlying that work was real.
It is not meeting analytics. Meeting analytics measure activity — hours in meetings, talk time, meeting load. DRI measures coordination quality: whether the meetings produced durable decisions or just apparent agreement.
The full category page — who it's for, how it works, and what the evidence shows.
ResearchThe five structural patterns that cause decision churn.
OpinionWhy the decision layer needs the same instrumentation as production systems.
ResearchWhat makes team decisions durable, and what makes them fragile.
New articles on coordination dynamics, decision reliability, and the science of how teams actually work.
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