Change Log Test

A diagnostic for one decision, run against its change history rather than its performance.

Pull the change log for the criteria behind an automated decision. Check whether every entry has a named owner and a documented reason beside it.

If it does, that decision is governed. If it does not, the change history stops being an audit trail and becomes evidence.

What it is looking for

Not neglect. The criteria behind most automated decisions move constantly, and for legitimate reasons. A screening threshold gets set differently by market and asset class, tightened when bad debt spikes, loosened when occupancy goes soft, revisited after an acquisition.

The drift is not a number sitting frozen. It is a number that moves repeatedly, for real operating reasons, while nothing links those moves back to the regulated decision underneath.

The three questions that bite: who approved the last change, why it was made, and whether anyone documented the business necessity that week. The answers are usually a name nobody remembers and a reason nobody recorded.

Why it is the first move

It takes about an hour and it applies to one decision. It is the cheapest way to find out whether a full inventory is warranted, and the answer is usually obvious within the first few entries.