The Switch Sheet

Somebody is asking you to approve a switch on the strength of a per-unit price. The unit is a chunk of text the tool reads or writes — the industry word for that chunk is a token — and the price of one says nothing about how many the system will use. This page fills in the two numbers that decide it and are not on the slide — what the system will do differently, and what leaving would cost.

• What it is: two questions answered in writing before you approve a change.
• Who fills it in: whoever proposed the switch. You read it; you do not write it.
• When: before the approval, not after the migration. It takes longer afterwards and is worth less.
• Time: twenty minutes to fill in. Longer if question two needs someone to go and find out, which is itself the finding.