Glossary

The standard uses a small set of terms with precise meanings. This page defines them as the book defines them, so a reader landing on any post can resolve its vocabulary in one place.

The Value Standard

The buyer-governed standard for defining, validating, executing, measuring, and adjusting value. The buyer sets the definition of value, and every later claim is tested against it. The seller adapts to being measured by it. The book develops the standard in full.

Value drift

The movement of a defined outcome away from its definition without any breach, failure, or decision anyone can point to. Contract terms are met and milestones are delivered while the outcome itself moves. Drift works through three mechanisms: interpretation, where the definition is read more loosely over time; substitution, where a nearby measure quietly replaces the defined one; and relaxation, where the threshold for success is lowered without being renegotiated.

The audit boundary

The line inside an organization between numbers that earn trust through verification and numbers that are simply accepted. Revenue and expenses are audited. The vendor’s business case typically is not, because verifying it was never assigned to anyone, so the figures justifying the largest decisions receive the least scrutiny. How the boundary works.

Request for Value (RFV)

A one-page document the business owner writes before any supplier is engaged, stating what the purchase must produce and how anyone will know. The RFI, RFQ and RFP are all addressed to the supplier; the RFV is addressed to the buyer’s own side, and it is issued alongside the RFP rather than in place of it. Its five parts:

  1. The outcomes the purchase must produce, in the organization’s own terms.
  2. The metrics that will measure them, each with a baseline and a date.
  3. The conditions that must hold, on both sides, for the outcomes to be reached.
  4. The evidence a supplier must provide for a value claim to count.
  5. The criteria by which responses will be compared, decided before the responses arrive.

The page attaches to the RFP, the contract references it, and the renewal tests it. See the definition page, the working paper and the template.

The value control loop

The standard’s operating cycle: define, validate, execute, measure, adjust. The loop exists because value requires maintenance after the decision, and because a loop that never closes is how drift goes unnoticed.

The buyer governance pyramid

The structure that places authority over value at the tier that answers for the outcome. Oversight duties belong where accountability already sits, rather than with whoever happens to hold the purchase process.

Compounded value

Value that builds on verified prior value. An organization that verifies outcomes can reinvest with narrower uncertainty each cycle. An organization that does not verify compounds its assumptions instead.

Decision artifacts

The three records a purchase must produce for its claimed outcome to be governed afterward. They are instruments of control rather than documents of record, and they count only when the governance cadence consults them:

  1. The Decision Memo: what was decided and why, including the definition of value, the evidence accepted and the thresholds set.
  2. The Executive Readout: whether the outcomes are being achieved, reported on a set cadence against the same definition.
  3. The Audit Record: what actually happened, stated afterward against what was promised.

A decision that leaves no artifact can be remembered but not governed.

Preemptive Value Architecture (PVA)

The buyer’s formal, published declaration of its governance architecture to the seller ecosystem, made before evaluation begins. The buyer holds PVA; sellers respond to it, and they self-select by their ability to operate inside it. It is legitimate only when it is vendor-agnostic, auditable and portable. PVA operates through five declarations:

  1. Diagnostic Standard: the buyer publishes the diagnostic any vendor engagement must use; sellers engage with the buyer’s diagnostic, not their own.
  2. Accountability Architecture: every strategic-tier vendor relationship carries shared governance infrastructure, with the buyer specifying who operates it.
  3. Network Orchestration: strategic vendors, implementation partners and the buyer’s own teams operate as one coordinated delivery network, on the buyer’s orchestration model.
  4. Progressive Evidence Cadence: evidence of value is produced in a structured sequence, at the pilot, departmental and enterprise level, each independently verifiable against buyer-defined metrics.
  5. Value Operations Integration: a defined function within or adjacent to the buyer continuously measures, optimizes and verifies value realization over the life of the engagement.

MAVEN

The standard’s buyer-controlled evaluation system. Outcomes are defined by the buyer, inputs are standardized, assumptions are explicit and outputs are comparable, so vendors compete on alignment to the buyer’s definition rather than on narrative. MAVEN stands for its five components:

  1. Mandate and Mission
  2. Assess and Align
  3. Value Definition and Viability
  4. Execute and Evaluate
  5. Navigate and Normalize

VIGOR

The standard’s governance and realization system. It governs what happens after the decision, holding execution to the same outcomes, measures and conditions that justified the purchase: reviewed weekly for execution, monthly for outcome and quarterly against strategy. VIGOR stands for its five components:

  1. Value Baseline
  2. Information Integrity
  3. Governance and Guardrails
  4. Options and Orchestration
  5. Realization and Review

VITAL

The system through which sellers operate inside buyer-governed systems: evidence over narrative, early surfacing of risk rewarded, obscured conditions penalized. It turns seller behavior from narrative delivery into outcome alignment, inside the buyer’s system. VITAL stands for its five components:

  1. Value Realization
  2. Issues and Initiatives
  3. Timelines and Targets
  4. Alignment and Accountability
  5. Leverage and Learning

Terms are added as the standard’s instruments publish.