Rehearsal plan
Scope, window, participants, and the measures to be taken during the exercise.
Withdrawal rehearsal
Run the workflow without the system on a schedule and measure what withdrawal would cost at the technical, operational, and institutional levels.
- 1 Evidence
- 2 Authority
- 3 Decision
- 4 Consequence
- 5 Challenge
- 6 Reconsideration
- 7 Correction acts here
Where it acts
At Correction, one of the seven stages every consequential decision passes through. It runs the work without the system, to show the institution can still stop using it and what that would cost.
Steps
Put the mechanism in motion
3 steps, in order. Check each one off as it is done; the records below show the work was done.
0 of 3 steps complete
Records this mechanism keeps
What a team running this mechanism keeps, and what each record is for.
Three-level reversibility readout
Cost and time to recover recorded separately for technical, operational, and institutional withdrawal.
Preserved capacity list
The staffing, tooling, and knowledge that must be maintained for withdrawal to stay possible, with owners.
Reuse-ready snippets
Copy policy, audit, and incident language
Use these snippets in requirements, audits, and postmortems with the mechanism permalink.
Policy requirement
Policy requirement (MEC-15 Withdrawal rehearsal) - Rehearse operating the workflow without the system on a published schedule. - Record cost, expertise available, and time to recover at the technical, operational, and institutional levels. Reference: https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal
Product requirement
Product requirement (MEC-15) - The system supports a rehearsal mode that suspends automated handling for a defined scope and window. - Rehearsal outcomes are recorded against the dependency record for the workflow.
Audit evidence checklist
Audit evidence checklist (MEC-15) [ ] Rehearsals ran on schedule with a defined scope and window. [ ] Results state cost, expertise available, and time to recover at all three levels. [ ] Preserved capacities have named owners and review dates.
Postmortem trigger
Postmortem trigger (MEC-15) Trigger review when a rehearsal is skipped, or when it shows the workflow can no longer be run without the system.
How it plays out
A claims team runs one region manually for a week each quarter, finds that throughput halves and that only two reviewers still hold the rules, and funds a training rotation as a preserved capacity.
Anti-patterns
Common failure cases and counterfactuals
Each case passes on paper and fails in operation. The counterfactual shows what would have worked.
The switch exists
A documented kill switch is treated as proof of reversibility, though nobody has run the workflow without the system in years.
Counterfactual: Withdrawal is rehearsed on a schedule and the cost of doing it is measured.
Exception: A rehearsal can be scoped to a slice of traffic; what it may not be is hypothetical.
Rehearsal without a record
The drill happens but produces no measurement, so nothing can be compared to last year.
Counterfactual: Each rehearsal records cost, expertise, and recovery time against the dependency record.
Exception: Qualitative findings are useful, but at least one comparable measure has to survive the exercise.
Diagnostics for this mechanism
Tools that size the risk this mechanism addresses.
Diagnostic
Delegation audit
Walks a team through one workflow against six questions and returns an exposure score, the permissions nobody can justify, and whether its decisions can be undone. Start here when the system keeps no decision records yet; use the record conformance checker once it does.
Cite this page · v1.2.1 · updated Oct 6, 2026 · CC BY-SA 4.0
APA
Ethotechnics Institute. (2026). Withdrawal rehearsal (MEC-15). Ethotechnics Institute. https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal
MLA
Ethotechnics Institute. "Withdrawal rehearsal (MEC-15)." Ethotechnics Institute, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal.
Chicago
Ethotechnics Institute. "Withdrawal rehearsal (MEC-15)." Ethotechnics Institute. Oct 6, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal.
BibTeX
@misc{mechanism_withdrawal-rehearsal,
title={Withdrawal rehearsal (MEC-15)},
author={Ethotechnics Institute},
year={2026},
howpublished={Ethotechnics Institute},
url={https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal},
version={v1.2.1}
}
RIS
TY - WEB TI - Withdrawal rehearsal (MEC-15) AU - Ethotechnics Institute PY - 2026 UR - https://ethotechnics.org/mechanisms/patterns/withdrawal-rehearsal ER -