Change Management
Governed evolution without authority drift
A canonical corpus must be stable enough to remain dependable and capable of governed change when revision is necessary. Change management provides the governance context through which those two requirements are reconciled.
The LSN Foundation governs and stewards the processes through which the canonical Lattice Core corpus may evolve. Change must remain explicit, attributable to the appropriate authority domain, and consistent with the integrity of the wider corpus.
The Change Principle
Stability Without Immutability
Canonical status does not mean that a document or proposition can never change. The documentation framework permits governed evolution where revision is necessary.
Stability comes from preserving authority, process, provenance, and continuity rather than from treating every canonical state as permanently immutable.
Change Must Be Governed
Canonical material is not changed through informal editing, implementation convention, research conclusion, institutional preference, or unrecorded reinterpretation.
Where change is required, it must occur through the applicable governance framework and the canonical source responsible for the proposition being changed.
Change Follows Authority
The canonical documentation model separates subject-matter authority. Change must respect that separation.
Governance Change
Governance conditions, authority, stewardship, lifecycle, and governance constraints belong to LCGD.
Changes to those propositions must be resolved through the governance authority responsible for them.
Architectural Change
Architectural constituents, relationships, responsibilities, boundaries, invariants, primitives, layers, and architecture-level conditions belong to LCAD.
Architectural change must therefore be made in LCAD within the governance framework established by LCGD.
Standards Change
Normative standards and conformance requirements belong to LCStD and remain subject to the architecture from which they derive.
Standards change cannot be used to introduce or redefine architecture.
Specification Change
Detailed technical and functional specification belongs to LCSpD and remains subordinate to both architecture and standards.
Specification change cannot silently amend either LCAD or LCStD.
Explanatory Change
LCED may change how canonical material is explained, contextualised, illustrated, or taught.
Explanatory revision cannot alter the controlling meaning of governance, architecture, standards, or specification.
Mapping Change
LCAAD may change to reflect the locations, relationships, navigation, and traceability of the canonical corpus.
Mapping change cannot become substantive change to the material being mapped.
The Owning-Source Rule
Change the Controlling Proposition at Its Source
Where a proposition requires substantive change, that change belongs in the canonical document with subject-matter authority over the proposition.
Other documents may then be updated as necessary to preserve consistency, derivation, explanation, mapping, and cross-reference across the corpus.
No Indirect Amendment
A lower-authority or downstream document cannot amend a controlling proposition indirectly.
If standards, specification, explanation, mapping, research, participation, or implementation reveal a problem in an upstream canonical proposition, the issue must be resolved in the source that owns that proposition.
Change Across Derived Documents
Changes to an upstream canonical source can require corresponding changes elsewhere in the corpus. That propagation does not transfer authority between documents.
LCAD establishes architecture. Where architecture changes through governance, affected standards, specifications, explanations, and mappings may require subsequent alignment.
LCStD formalises standards and conformance. Changes to standards must remain derived from and consistent with the architecture established by LCAD.
LCSpD provides detailed specification. Specification changes must remain within the architecture and standards established by LCAD and LCStD.
LCED explains. Explanatory material may require revision when controlling canonical material changes, but explanation does not determine that substantive change.
LCAAD maps. The atlas should follow changes to the substantive corpus rather than becoming an independent source of those changes.
Inputs Without Automatic Authority
Structural separation does not prevent governance from receiving evidence, analysis, experience, or proposals from the wider ecosystem. It prevents those inputs from becoming canonical change merely by existing.
Research
Independent research can identify problems, test assumptions, analyse consequences, and inform deliberation.
Research findings do not independently amend the canonical corpus.
Participation
Community, practitioner, and stakeholder participation can contribute knowledge, experience, proposals, and perspective.
Participation contributes to governance and development without itself becoming canonical authority.
Implementation
Implementation experience can expose ambiguity, incompatibility, missing detail, or practical consequences in canonical material.
Implementation practice does not silently become architecture, standards, or specification.
Governance Deliberation
Governance can evaluate proposed change and determine whether the applicable governed process should be invoked.
Governance authority does not erase the subject-matter boundary of the canonical source being changed.
Protection Against Drift
Drift Through Accumulation
Canonical drift need not result from a single deliberate redefinition. It can emerge gradually when downstream documents, explanatory language, implementation conventions, or repeated interpretations begin to diverge from the source they are meant to express.
Change management therefore protects both deliberate revision and the boundaries that prevent unintended revision.
Corpus Alignment
Where inconsistencies appear, they should be resolved against the canonical source with authority over the subject matter.
The objective is not to force every document to contain the same material. It is to ensure that repeated or derived material remains consistent with the proposition controlled by its owning source.
Cross-Document Consistency
Repetition Is Permitted
Canonical documents may repeat context, reference propositions established elsewhere, or restate material where doing so is useful to the responsibility of the receiving document.
The documentation model does not require artificial isolation between documents.
Authority Must Remain Explicit
Repetition must not create competing canonical definitions.
Where repeated material conflicts with the controlling source, the conflict is resolved through the source with subject-matter authority rather than by treating repetition as an independent amendment.
LCGD & Change Governance
Governance of Change
LCGD governs the conditions under which the canonical Lattice Core corpus may change.
Its responsibility includes the governance framework, authority, change conditions, stewardship, document lifecycle, and governance constraints applicable to canonical maintenance and evolution.
Governance Does Not Replace the Owning Source
LCGD governs the conditions under which architectural change can occur, but LCAD remains the source of architecture.
The same principle applies across the corpus: governance authorises and constrains change while substantive change is expressed through the canonical source responsible for the subject matter.
Procedural Boundary
This page describes the public governance principles that bound canonical change. It does not independently create a constitutional change procedure.
No approval threshold is established here. Any formal approval requirements belong to the applicable governance framework.
No voting model is established here. This page does not define who votes, how votes are counted, or whether voting is required.
No amendment mechanism is established here. The existence of governed change does not justify inventing a procedural mechanism outside LCGD.
No governance invariant is established here. Normative constitutional constraints belong to their canonical governance source.
Change & Documentary Continuity
Version History
Governed change should remain visible through identifiable documentary states rather than silent replacement.
Version history records formally established editions and their relationship across time.
Historical Preservation
Superseded material can be preserved as part of the historical record without retaining the authority of the later controlling canonical state.
This preserves provenance while keeping current and historical material distinguishable.
Lifecycle and Change Are Connected
Change management determines how canonical evolution remains governed. Document lifecycle preserves the identity, version, continuity, supersession, and historical record through which that evolution remains visible.
Change Management Principles
Canonical does not mean immutable. The corpus can evolve through governed change.
Change follows subject-matter authority. A proposition is changed through the canonical source responsible for that proposition.
Governance governs change. LCGD establishes the governance framework within which canonical change occurs.
Governance does not replace substantive authority. Governing architectural change does not make LCGD the source of architecture.
Lower-authority material cannot amend upward. Standards, specifications, explanation, mapping, research, participation, and implementation cannot silently redefine a controlling proposition.
Derived documents follow controlling change. Where an upstream proposition changes, affected downstream or explanatory material can be realigned without acquiring authority over the source.
History remains visible. Governed revision should preserve documentary continuity and provenance rather than silently erase earlier states.
Detailed procedure belongs to LCGD. This page describes the change-management boundary without inventing constitutional mechanisms.
Governance Areas
Constitutional Stewardship
Durable governance of the canonical corpus while preserving explicit authority boundaries.
Standards Stewardship
Governance of the relationship between architecture, standards and conformance, detailed specification, and implementation.
Document Lifecycle
Maintenance of canonical identity, publication state, version continuity, supersession, and historical preservation.
Governance Overview
The Foundation's wider governance, stewardship, authority, and institutional boundaries.