The last two editions followed the cost of an unresolved decision into the places it hides. In Edition 11 it was spread across cost centers. In Edition 12 it was absorbed by the buffers built to protect the plan. Both looked at where the cost goes once it exists.
This edition looks at how it forms, and why the same open question can be inexpensive one month and costly a few months later.
The question doesn’t change
An open decision is a question. Which one wins when growth and margin collide? Which customers come first when capacity is short? What counts as done?
On the day the directive is written, that question costs a conversation. Someone notices it, the people who set the intent settle it, and the directive goes out carrying the answer.
If nobody notices, the question doesn’t wait. Work begins anyway. Teams supply their own answers so they can keep moving, and then they build on those answers.
The question never gets bigger. What grows is everything that depends on it.
How dependency builds the cost
That is the Discovery Curve: the cost of resolving an open decision rises the further downstream it is found, because more work has come to depend on the answer.
Each piece of work built on an assumed answer may have to be checked, adjusted or redone once the real answer arrives. A plan rests on the assumption. A forecast rests on the plan. Then a hiring request, a pricing model, a sales target and a vendor schedule rest on the forecast. When the question finally surfaces, resolving it means reopening every layer that was built on the guess.
No fixed formula says how steep the curve is. That depends on how much work builds on the assumption and how tightly that work is connected. The direction holds, though. The later the discovery, the more there is to undo.
Back to the expansion
Take the company this series has followed since Edition 8: pushing into a new market while holding a target margin, with no settled answer on which one wins.
At origin, this is one question in one room.
In the first month, sales assumes growth wins and prices aggressively to take share. Operations assumes margin wins and sizes capacity conservatively. Both answers are reasonable. Neither was given to them.
By the third month, territory plans and regional hiring plans are built around the sales forecast. Pricing is published. Contracts are being prepared on those terms. The operating schedule is built on lean capacity, and delivery starts to strain.
In the fifth month, a margin review surfaces the gap, and leadership answers the question: margin comes first. Now that answer has to travel back through pricing, contract terms, territory plans, hiring plans and capacity.
It’s the same question that was open on day one. The cost of answering it is completely different.
What the portfolio data shows
Tempo Software’s 2026 State of Strategic Portfolio Management report surveyed 667 planning and PMO leaders across 43 countries in late 2025. Teams that review and reforecast their portfolios frequently cancel roughly 8 percentage points more projects than teams that review less often. Roughly 8 points more of their projects also deliver ROI.
At first glance, cancelling more looks like a worse record. The data points the other way. As Tempo’s CEO, Vic Chynoweth, told Digital CxO: “Cancellation is not failure. It’s disciplined capital allocation.”
The survey doesn’t measure the Discovery Curve directly. It doesn’t track when an open decision was found or how much rework followed. What it shows is consistent with the curve: the teams that look sooner, while there is still room to change course, see more of their work pay off.
Left of the dashboard
A tighter review cadence moves discovery earlier within execution. Monthly finds what quarterly would have found later. Still, a review reads what work has already produced, and by then something depends on the answer.
The earliest point on the curve sits left of the dashboard. It’s in the directive itself, where the question is still just a question and nothing has been built on a guess. There, resolving it costs what it cost on the first day: a conversation.
The signal
An open decision eventually meets execution. What varies is when its consequences surface, and how much work depends on the assumed answer by then.
Action does not create the signal. It carries it.
The standard is alignment.
Source: Tempo Software, “The 2026 State of Strategic Portfolio Management.” Survey of 667 planning and PMO leaders across 43 countries, October to November 2025. Vic Chynoweth quote via Digital CxO, “Most Organizations Plan Strategically. Few Manage It That Way,” March 2, 2026.