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The method: from a consumer's value to a delivered rung

The method, written down in kan/, is the part of KAN that decides what to do next and how much of it to do. It starts from a consumer's value, not from a task list, and it ends in one of two outcomes: Delivered, with the value verified and presented, or Blocked, with what would unblock it.

Teaches from kan/rung-delivery.md, kan/6w-sdmr.md, kan/foundations.md and kan/pragmatic-manifesto.md.

The route in one line

UNDERSTAND → ESTIMATE → EXPAND → SYNTHESIZE → EXECUTE, ending Delivered or Blocked. Each phase has one useful output, and three loops lead back when the evidence says the plan is wrong. The seven lessons take the pieces in the order a seat meets them.

Lessons

  1. A rung delivers one consumer value: rungs, stories and waves, and why a wave never accepts a whole story.
  2. Frame it with 6W: What, Why, Who, Where, When and Value, in that order, and why How is not one of the six.
  3. Expose the uncertainty: the four Rumsfeld quadrants and the next useful check for each.
  4. Size it with FIB: the scale from 1 to 21, decomposition at 13, and a timebox in wall-clock time.
  5. Deliver through PTE: five phases, three loops and two outcomes.
  6. Escalate a consequential choice: SDMR's six parts, in order, and when to use it.
  7. Good, bad, test and blue: a falsifying check, a mutant, and why a commit is not acceptance.

Where it comes from

The method is a reading of older ideas, each listed with its limits in kan/foundations.md. Three of them shape the whole section:

  • The Agile Manifesto's principles: “Choose a small consumer outcome; adjust participation and the next increment after feedback”, with the limit that “Activity or speed alone does not establish value”.
  • Extreme Programming: “Small changes, feedback, testing, and refactoring reinforce one another”, which KAN applies as “Keep verification close to the increment and improve structure in blue when evidence warrants it”.
  • DRY, from The Pragmatic Programmer: it is about knowledge, not text, so the practice is to “keep one authoritative rule and link its views”, because “Similar text does not always mean shared responsibility.”

The values those ideas serve here are in kan/pragmatic-manifesto.md, which opens: “Deliver a useful change, learn from its actual effects, and make the next change easier.”

The worked example

Every lesson shows its rule in the EchoEdu migration of 25 October 2026: the course waves, the stories and their estimates, a reframe that arrived in the middle of a wave, and the checks that went red before they went green.

Next: A rung delivers one consumer value · Up: KAN

Teaches ecd/kan at 2d1b5c8e, 25 October 2026.