Contract strictness trades integration velocity and late-stage risk.
+------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Approach | Strength | Weakness | Best when |
+------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Strict | predictable | slower early | new program |
| Balanced | practical | needs rigor | stable teams |
| Aggressive | fast | escape risk | late schedule |
| Re-architect | durable | expensive | recurring failures |
+------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+Pick the approach based on residual silicon risk, not only schedule pressure.
Policy-only arguments without artifact evidence
Unbounded waivers
INTEGRATION EVIDENCE MATRIX — Block Budget Contracts
+-------------------+------------------------+--------------------------+-------------------------+
| Evidence | Tells you | Does not prove | Next action |
+-------------------+------------------------+--------------------------+-------------------------+
| Manifest diff | baseline changed | root cause itself | isolate first delta |
| Domain trace | where behavior diverged| ownership accountability | map to contract owner |
| Signoff dashboard | closure posture | reproducibility quality | verify source artifacts |
| Bring-up logs | software-visible symptom| physical/timing cause | correlate with HW trace |
| Waiver register | accepted residual risk | technical closure | review expiry criteria |
+-------------------+------------------------+--------------------------+-------------------------+Budget and ownership contracts are technical artifacts, not PM slides.
HIERARCHY CONTRACT FLOW
partition -> block budget -> owner signoff -> integration checkpointBUDGET RISK TREND
open risks ████████
owned fixes ███████
unowned risks ██budget delta dashboard
ownership matrix
milestone health report
risk register
A timing overrun was solved only after budget ownership moved from shared to single-threaded.
Validate contract revision
Check owner signatures
Audit milestone readiness
Ask: what baseline, owner, and artifact prove this topic is truly closed?
State baseline manifest and owner with every closure metric.
Run cross-domain regression after every top-level fix.
Comparing results across different manifests.
Unowned issues slipping through review cycles.
Waiving risks without expiry and validation plan.
Chip closure starts with explicit budget contracts per block; integration fails when local optimizations violate global top-level constraints.
Metric: timing/power/area budget adherence at tape-in gates
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