A retail demand model posts a strong overall accuracy but misses a required specification that error during promotional weeks stay inside a pre-agreed bound. The team wants to recommend it on the overall number alone. What should govern that call?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Failing the gate check is still a fail even when the overall grade looks pretty. Your promotional-week bound was a required specification, so a miss blocks the recommendation. Do not let one strong accuracy number talk you out of a check you already agreed to.
Full Explanation
A specification check is a requirement agreed before the headline score is used to justify a launch. The promotional-week error bound is that kind of requirement, and the demand model missed it, so the recommendation is blocked even though overall accuracy looks strong. Letting the headline override the bound rewrites the specification after the fact and is exactly the move the team is tempted to make. Deferring the bound until after launch means the check no longer governs the recommendation; the model would already be in the stores. Parking the miss in a footnote while recommending the model also fails the check, because a footnote does not bring promotional-week error back inside the bound. Exam caveat: a specification is not the metric you happened to like after seeing results; if the bound was required, a pass on a different number does not substitute. Operational check: write the promotional-week error next to the pre-agreed bound and withhold the recommendation when the error sits outside that bound.