Loading...
Loading...
The cumulative effort required to monitor, review, and validate organisational activity in order to maintain acceptable levels of risk and accountability. Assurance load is not simply a function of organisational size; it is a function of the volume of discretionary action permitted within the system. Where constraints are weak or externalised, assurance load grows non-linearly with complexity.
A bank doubles its product lines. Under oversight-dominant governance, assurance load more than doubles—because interactions between products create new failure modes that must also be monitored. Under architectural constraints, many of these interactions are structurally prevented, stabilising assurance load.
Section IV: Constraint Placement and the Dynamics of Assurance Load