Declare your own period, and see what falls outside it

Two dates. That is the whole of this lesson's input, and the two dates decide what every other row in your register means.

Until a period exists, an artefact dated March is just an artefact dated March. Once a period exists, that same artefact is either inside it, outside it, or stale for its own cadence — and which of those it is was decided by you, the moment you typed the second date.

So type them. Not the dates you would like, and not the dates a buyer asked for: the ones you would defend if somebody asked what you can actually show for each month between them.

Your own register

Nothing here is graded, and nothing here leaves your browser unless you are signed in. A filled-in register is an inventory of your known weaknesses, so keep the real one where your auditor can see it — this is somewhere to think.

The period you are claiming

Everything in here is measured against these two dates. Typed as year-month-day, so the same thing is stored whatever your browser thinks the date format is.

Opens

Closes

two dates, the second after the first

Save the period

Now read what the referee says. The rules that fire against a period are all about artefacts, because that is where a period makes contact with evidence: something covers a stretch that does not overlap yours, something was last produced long before your period closed, or a control you marked as operating is linked to an artefact with no instance recorded inside the period at all.

What does not line up

What your period just said about your evidence

Nothing yet, because there is nothing in here yet. An empty workspace has no contradictions and tells you nothing.

These are contradictions between things you wrote. Nothing here can tell you whether any of it is enough — that is a judgement, and it moves with the auditor, the boundary and the year.

Reading the output honestly

Three shapes of thing appear in that panel, and they mean different things.

An artefact whose period does not overlap yours. The most common cause is a genuinely useful document from last year. It is not worthless — it may be the best evidence of design you have — but it speaks to a stretch of time your opinion is not about. The question is what covers the period itself.

An artefact that is stale for its own cadence. You said this thing is produced monthly and the most recent one predates the close of your period by far more than a month. Two readings: it ran and nobody recorded it, or it did not run. The arithmetic cannot distinguish them and neither can anybody else from the outside, which is the point.

A control marked operating with no instance inside the period. This one is a flat contradiction between two things you wrote. One of them is wrong and you are the only person who knows which.

If the panel is quiet, check why before taking it as good news. A period with no evidence rows against it produces no contradictions, in the same way an empty register produces none. The count in this subject rises as you fill it in honestly, and a low count early on usually means the rows are not there yet rather than that the period is clean.

Check

You lengthen your period by six months, backwards, so it opens earlier. What happens to the contradictions?

Choose one answer

Fewer — a longer period gives each artefact more room to fall inside itMore — the period now expects instances from months that have nothing in themNo change — the period is a label and the evidence is the evidenceIt depends entirely on which artefacts you have

Check answer

Where this stops holding

The period in your register is now a declared fact, and the arithmetic treats it as the thing being evidenced. In practice the dates often arrive from somewhere else entirely: a buyer's deadline worked backwards, or a financial year, or a previous report that has to be renewed without a gap.

When that happens the register measures your evidence against somebody else's calendar, and the contradictions it reports are real but the diagnosis is inverted. The finding says you are missing instances. The cause is that the period was chosen to fit a date rather than to fit what you can show.

That is worth naming when you see it, because the two situations want different work. A period you chose, with gaps in it, is a control problem. A period somebody handed you, with gaps in it, is a conversation about the period — and the lesson at the end of this track is about having it.

Worth remembering

• Two dates turn every artefact in the register from a dated document into something inside the period, outside it, or stale for its cadence.
• Three shapes of contradiction fire against a period: an artefact that does not overlap it, an artefact older than its own cadence allows, and a control marked operating with no instance inside the period at all.
• An artefact outside the period may still be the best evidence of design you have; what it cannot do is speak to the period.
• Staleness has two readings — it ran unrecorded, or it did not run — and nothing from outside can tell them apart.
• Lengthening a period adds expected instances faster than it absorbs artefacts, so a longer period is more expensive in contradictions rather than less.
• A quiet findings panel early on usually means the evidence rows are not in yet, not that the period is clean.
• When the dates came from a buyer's deadline rather than from what you can evidence, the findings are real and the diagnosis is about the period rather than the controls.