Engagements: scope, deliverables, governance, sessions, decisions and the work that follows.
15 classes, 22 relations, 1 rules, 0 actions, extends oto-core. oto registry add https://github.com/Cynergis/oto-registry, oto ontology add professional-services, then oto init --ontology professional-services.
| Class | What it is | The question it answers | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document | A source document in the corpus: a contract, a deck, a transcript, a plan. | Where is this written down? | Every fact needs a checkable source with its own date. |
| Action | Something that can be done about an entity, described the way an MCP server describes a tool and bound to the graph. Oto lists it; the caller invokes it; the recorded run is evidence. | What can be done about this, and how? | The binding between an entity, the tool that acts on it, its inputs, its credentials by name and its preconditions is otherwise tribal knowledge in an agent's prompt; as a fact it is versioned, reviewed and shared. Oto never invokes it. |
| Engagement | A contracted body of work between a supplier and a client, with a scope and a period. | What is in scope, for whom, over what period? | The engagement bounds everything else, and its period is what makes a fact current or historical. |
| Organization | A company or a unit within one: the client, the supplier, a division, a function. | Who is the client, who is the supplier, and which unit is affected? | Both sides and their internal units have to be referenceable, and the same class serves all three. |
| Person | A named individual. Consider carefully whether you need this class at all; see the README. | Whose individual decision was this? | Kept only for the few people whose decisions must be traced. Most ownership questions are answered better by a role. |
| Role | A defined function in the target operating model or the delivery team. Filled by a person. | Who is accountable, without naming a person? | Roles are stable while people move, so attaching ownership to a role keeps history correct. |
| Workstream | One scope area of the engagement, with its own plan and owner. | Which part of the engagement is this, and who runs it? | Work is planned and reported per workstream, and each has its own owner and its own deliverables. |
| Deliverable | A contracted artifact with a due date and an acceptance condition. | What did we contract to produce, and is it accepted? | A deliverable has a due date and an acceptance condition, which are commitments rather than descriptions. |
| GovernanceForum | A recurring body that decides or validates: a steering committee, a working group, a review board. | Which body decides this, and what has it decided? | A forum recurs and accumulates decisions, so it must persist independently of any single meeting. |
| Session | A dated event that produced something: an interview, a workshop, a meeting. Distinct from the transcript recording it. | What happened on that date, and what came out of it? | A session is a dated event with outcomes, and it is separate from any document recording it. |
| Decision | A choice made, proposed or deferred, with its reason. Superseded by a later decision, never overwritten. | What did we settle, when, and why? | A decision carries a reason and a date, and a later one supersedes it rather than erasing it. |
| ActionItem | A committed task arising from a session or a decision, with an owner and a state. | What did we commit to, and is it done? | A commitment has an owner and a lifecycle state, and it is what turns a decision into work. |
| Question | An open question raised and not yet answered, with an owner. | What is still open, and who owns getting the answer? | Open questions are the most perishable knowledge in an engagement and the first thing lost when people rotate. |
| Concept | A construct the engagement designs or adopts: an operating model element, a way of working, a capability. | What are we designing or adopting, and what does it mean here? | New vocabulary is the main output of a transformation, and every stakeholder needs one definition of it. |
| Framework | A reusable method or model brought to the engagement rather than invented in it. | What method are we applying, and where did it come from? | A method brought in from outside is not the engagement's own design, and the distinction matters for provenance. |
| Relation | From | To | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
cites | Document | Document | This document refers to that one, so a fact traced to it can be traced one step further. |
acts_on | Action | The entity a recorded run of this action read or changed. | |
executed_by | Action | Who is accountable for invoking this action: a team, never a person. | |
delivers | Organization | Engagement | The supplier delivering an engagement. |
client_of | Organization | Engagement | The client an engagement is for. |
part_of | Organization|Workstream|Concept|Role | Organization|Workstream|Concept|Engagement | A containment or membership relationship. |
scoped_as | Engagement | Workstream | A workstream inside an engagement's scope. |
produces | Workstream|Session | Deliverable|Concept | What a workstream or session produced. |
owns | Person|Role|Organization | Workstream|Deliverable|ActionItem|Question | Accountability for something. |
fills | Person | Role | The person performing a role. |
member_of | Person|Role | Organization|GovernanceForum | Membership in an organization or forum. |
instance_of | Session | GovernanceForum | A session that is one meeting of a recurring forum. |
recorded_in | Session | Document | The document that records a session. |
raised | Session | Decision|ActionItem|Question | An outcome that came out of a session. |
discusses | Session|Document | Concept|Workstream|Deliverable|Organization|Role|Decision | A subject a session or document covers. |
decides | Decision | Concept|Workstream|Deliverable|Role | What a decision settles. |
implements | ActionItem | Decision | An action item carrying out a decision. |
answers | ActionItem|Decision | Question | What resolved an open question. |
informed_by | Workstream|Concept|Deliverable | Framework | A method or model relied on. |
depends_on | Deliverable|Workstream|ActionItem | Deliverable|Workstream|ActionItem | A sequencing or blocking dependency. |
specifies | Document | Engagement|Deliverable | The document that defines something. |
supersedes | Decision|Concept|Deliverable|Document | Decision|Concept|Deliverable|Document | This replaced that. Use with the temporal fields, never by overwriting. |
