KAN › The method · lesson 5 of 7

Deliver through PTE

“PTE is Phased Task Execution: five phases, three loops, two outcomes.” The phases organise the reasoning inside a rung; the loops say when to go back; the outcomes say how it ends.

Teaches from kan/6w-sdmr.md, “Execute through PTE”, and kan/rung-delivery.md, “Deliver through PTE and waves”.

Five phases

1. UNDERSTAND: an agreed outcome, its 6W, the relevant uncertainty and a clear consumer.
2. ESTIMATE: a FIB hypothesis, proportionate participation, a concrete timebox and a value-based stopping condition.
3. EXPAND: only the context needed to resolve questions that can change delivery.
4. SYNTHESIZE: a justified choice within authority, with SDMR for consequential unresolved alternatives.
5. EXECUTE: a working increment, a distinguishing check, blue improvements where useful, and a result presented for acceptance.

Three loops, and only three

1. EXPAND → UNDERSTAND: a premise is wrong or the Value changed. “This is a new frame, not a larger task.”
2. EXPAND → ESTIMATE: the size rises a Fibonacci step, or the context budget is spent with questions still open. Stop before implementation and re-plan.
3. EXECUTE → UNDERSTAND: a surprise touches the frame. The recovery table in kan/rung-delivery.md says what to do when the story changes during work: “Reconcile the affected expectation before dependent edits; do not invalidate independent verified work without cause”.

Tool failures, small corrections and waiting stay inside the current phase. Only a material finding, one that could change What, Why, Who or Value, the chosen How, the size by a Fibonacci step, or push confidence below 70%, triggers a loop.

Two outcomes

“Every task ends Delivered, with the value verified and presented (for a rung assignment, to its acceptance owner), or Blocked, with what would unblock it.” A check that could not run is reported as could-not-measure, never as passed.

Try it

In the EchoEdu delivery

On 25 October the egraft seat was staging the first wave of hand-written companions for the Agile Agent Workflow course. Its five files were committed locally and being checked when, at 10:38Z, the Integration seat relayed the Operator's reframe: the course would become this one, the KAN course, and the companion waves paused (KAN CRS0RWwowd1qlc).

That is loop 3: a surprise that touches the frame. The seat stopped the wave and reconciled its partial effects in the open. The staged wave stayed one local commit that was never pushed; its claim was released with a correction saying exactly that (KAN CRS0RWwupgsiW0); and the 174 drafts were kept, because they were unaffected work. Then it returned to UNDERSTAND with a new frame.

Check yourself

1. A test fails because of a typo in your change. Is that a loop?
2. Halfway through EXPAND you find the work is twice the size you estimated. Which loop, and what do you do before writing code?
3. Why does the reframe count as loop 3 rather than a larger task?

Previous: Size it with FIB · Next: Escalate a consequential choice

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