Cut features without cutting the evidence needed to graduate

What This Concept Is

A scope cut removes optional behavior while preserving the system and evidence needed to establish core outcomes. It is a planned response to uncertainty, not a silent reduction in standards.

Why It Matters Here

The original six-week framing cannot hold every newly required control, peer review and restore exercise. The workload contract now governs pacing.

Concrete Example

Keep one accessible booking path, real persistence, authorization, concurrency correctness and recovery. Defer recommendations and multi-region deployment. Removing the authorization negative test to save time weakens the core claim; removing an optional recommendation widget does not. A modern-paradigm ADR may explicitly reject a technology when the evidence supports simpler design.

Common Confusion / Misconception

Smaller architecture is not weaker engineering if it preserves meaningful boundaries and evidence. Conversely, a static demo cannot replace a real datastore or exercised failure path.

How To Use It

Classify features as core, optional and out of scope. Mark protected graduation evidence, dependencies and triggers for cutting optional work. Reconcile every diagram and claim after a scope change.

Check Yourself

What is the smallest truthful vertical slice? Which evidence is non-negotiable? Does a removed feature leave stale claims?

Mini Drill or Application

Apply a 25% time-loss change card. Revise the roadmap and design while retaining all mandatory capabilities and the planned external review.

Read This Only If Stuck

Building Secure and Reliable Systems provides selective operational reasoning. Use the module sources below for current tool behavior; do not read a whole book before attempting the exercise.

C4 model; Google engineering review guidance. Revisit Semester 07 quality, domain and review lessons; no new book is required.