Decision log maintenance

Purpose

Maintains a durable register of decisions from approved meeting notes, decision records, and change documents. It captures the exact decision, scope, rationale, owner, due date, status, supersession, and evidence so later reports do not reconstruct history.

Scope

Cover decisions recorded in minutes, decision registers, approval notes, and change-control records. Preserve original wording and distinguish active, completed, superseded, deferred, and proposed entries. Excluded: deciding on behalf of an owner or rewriting the historical record.

Data basis

• Meeting minutes, decision records, change requests, and the existing decision register.
• Fields decision_id, decision_text, rationale, scope, owner, due_date, status, superseded_by, and source_ref.
• Governance policy defining status transitions and decision authority.

Result

A decision register with one row per decision and citations. Decision register memo {date}

Quality criteria

• Every register row has a stable decision ID, verbatim decision, source citation, and current status.
• Supersession links point to an earlier or later decision ID and never form an unexplained cycle.
• Owners and due dates are copied only when the source states them.
• Duplicate decisions are merged only with both source references retained.
• The memo counts active, completed, overdue, deferred, and superseded rows from the sheet.

Instructions

A decision row is authoritative only when its source states the decision, scope, and effective status; proposed ideas remain proposals.

Adapt before use

For each decision, retain the original wording, decision date, effective date, scope boundary, named owner, due date, status, and superseded-by identifier. A later note changes status only when it explicitly refers to the earlier decision.

• Add the company policy, rubric, control matrix, or approved format named in the Data basis.
• Map source column names, identifiers, status values, and date or currency conventions.
• Define the process threshold, escalation vocabulary, responsible review role, and retention rule.