Model Plan for Virtual Organizations This plan documents the requirements for establishing, operating, maintaining, adapting, and concluding virtual organizations using the minimum organizational and technological capabilities necessary to achieve shared objectives. This model plan applies the principles documented in the Startup Organization Requirements plan to organizations whose participants coordinate primarily through networked information and communications technologies. ^ https://stratml.us/docs/SOR.xml ^^ The model emphasizes capabilities rather than particular organizational forms, tools, applications, or services. Examples of tools, applications, services, standards, protocols, and technologies identified in this plan are illustrative rather than prescriptive. Their inclusion does not constitute endorsement or imply that any particular implementation is necessary for establishment or operation of a virtual organization. Requirements are expressed primarily in terms of capabilities so that alternative and emerging implementations can satisfy them. ^^ Capabilities are distinguished, where useful, as Required, Conditional, or Enhancing. Required capabilities are considered necessary for reliable operation of a virtual organization. Conditional capabilities become necessary when the organization's activities create the corresponding requirement. Enhancing capabilities may improve effectiveness but are not necessary for initial viability. ^^ Where applicable, open standards and interoperable protocols should be considered along with particular products and services to reduce unnecessary dependencies on individual providers and facilitate portability, discovery, integration, and continuing access to organizational information. ^^ StratML is cited as an example of a standardized means of expressing strategic objectives, stakeholders, and related information in machine-readable form. ISO 17469-1 specifies the core strategic planning elements, while ANSI/AIIM 22:2017 Part 2 extends the model to performance plans and reports. StratML-based tools, applications, and services may therefore support discovery, matching, coordination, monitoring, reporting, and AI-assisted interaction among participants pursuing shared objectives. ^^ A guiding implementation principle is to minimize what participants must learn while maximizing what their tools, applications, services, and agents can understand and exchange. Participants should not ordinarily need to interact directly with underlying data standards or technical infrastructure in order to benefit from them. ^^ Submitter's Note: This plan has been compiled in dialog with ChatGPT. Virtual Organizations VOs _42b8d3ba-0f74-4e80-9bc8-377fa62079e7 Organizations in which people, organizations, and agents coordinate primarily through networked information and communications technologies to pursue shared objectives without requiring common physical presence or unnecessary institutional infrastructure. Founders People and organizations initiating virtual organizations and establishing their purposes, initial capabilities, and participation arrangements. Participants People and organizations contributing knowledge, activities, resources, or other capabilities toward achievement of shared objectives. Beneficiaries People and organizations expected to benefit from results produced by virtual organizations. Resource Providers People and organizations providing financial, informational, technological, human, or other resources supporting virtual organizations. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing tools, applications, services, standards, protocols, infrastructure, or other capabilities supporting virtual organizations. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents authorized to perform discovery, communication, coordination, analysis, monitoring, reporting, or other functions in support of shared objectives. Virtual organizations effectively achieve shared objectives without unnecessary institutional overhead _9fb2e21e-fb69-4d57-a3f4-a00fd31658c7 To enable people, organizations, and agents to form, operate, maintain, adapt, and conclude virtual organizations using the minimum capabilities necessary to achieve shared objectives. _747414df-6502-4d2b-9af4-6fc83ea2b0e0 Purpose Focus organizational relationships, activities, and resources on explicitly defined shared objectives. Participation Enable stakeholders to contribute productively with minimal unnecessary barriers, obligations, and learning requirements. Asynchrony Enable essential organizational activities to be conducted without requiring participants to be available simultaneously. Interoperability Enable information, tools, applications, services, and agents to work together across organizational and technological boundaries. Portability Preserve practical ability to retain and transfer organizational information and capabilities among alternative tools, services, and providers. Transparency Make purposes, responsibilities, decisions, activities, and results visible to stakeholders to the extent appropriate to their interests and authorized roles. Accountability Relate authorized actions and responsibilities to identifiable people, organizations, or agents and their contributions toward shared objectives. Evidence Use observable activities, results, and stakeholder feedback to assess progress and guide adaptation. Adaptability Enable organizational arrangements and supporting technologies to evolve as objectives, circumstances, evidence, and available capabilities change. Parsimony Require organizational structures, processes, technologies, and participant effort only to the extent they demonstrably contribute to shared objectives. Formation Establish the purpose, objectives, stakeholders, identity, and participation requirements needed to initiate a virtual organization. _84c8d0d6-42d9-467c-9a42-0b6b29d33ca0 1 Founders People and organizations initiating the virtual organization and establishing its initial purpose, objectives, identity, and participation arrangements. Participants People and organizations considering or beginning participation in pursuit of the shared objectives. Formation should require no more organizational and technological infrastructure than is necessary to make the purpose understandable, enable relevant stakeholders to discover the organization, and allow productive participation to begin. Required capabilities should be established before optional organizational machinery. Additional structures and technologies can be introduced as experience demonstrates their value. Purpose Define and publish the desired future state and basic purpose of the virtual organization in forms understandable to prospective participants and their authorized agents. _66e428bf-c2a7-4a16-a7d6-be88f77bbdd6 1.1 Founders People and organizations responsible for initially defining and publishing the desired future state and basic purpose. Participants People and organizations using the stated purpose to determine whether their interests and capabilities align with the virtual organization. Required capability: persistently publish the organization's vision and mission in forms accessible to relevant stakeholders. ^^ Machine-readable representation enhances discovery and automated processing but should not require participants to understand the underlying syntax or data model. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include websites and content management systems, shared documents, repositories, knowledge bases, and StratML. ISO 17469-1 StratML provides standardized elements for expressing Vision and Mission along with related strategic planning information. Objectives Define and publish shared objectives clearly enough to orient contributions, coordination, resource allocation, and assessment of results. _4561c15d-1c31-4ce0-b3c7-4f1743ee6325 1.2 Founders People and organizations initially defining the results the virtual organization seeks to achieve. Participants People and organizations using shared objectives to orient and coordinate their contributions. Required capability: maintain persistent, discoverable representations of shared objectives that can be referenced independently and related to activities, stakeholders, resources, and results. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include project and task management systems, shared planning documents, issue trackers, knowledge graphs, databases, and StratML. ISO 17469-1 provides standardized Goal and Objective elements, while ANSI/AIIM 22:2017 Part 2 enables objectives to be related to performance indicators and results. ^^ Persistent identifiers for objectives can facilitate linking, discovery, matching, reporting, and AI-assisted coordination across otherwise independent tools and organizations. Stakeholders Identify stakeholders whose interests may be affected or whose contributions, resources, authority, or actions may be relevant to achieving the shared objectives. _c121141e-8037-4f93-b5a2-340c27ea1d91 1.3 Founders People and organizations initially identifying stakeholders relevant to the shared objectives. Participants People and organizations whose interests, capabilities, and contributions may be related to shared objectives. Required capability: associate relevant people, organizations, groups, and authorized agents with the objectives and activities to which their interests or contributions relate. ^^ Identification as a stakeholder should not by itself imply membership, obligation, authority, endorsement, or consent to participate. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include contact directories, customer and constituent relationship management systems, professional and social networks, identity directories, knowledge graphs, and StratML. StratML provides standardized Stakeholder elements at organization, goal, and objective levels and can support discovery and matching based upon explicitly documented interests and objectives. Identity Establish persistent means of identifying the virtual organization, its relevant information resources, and participants whose actions require attribution. _f4db936c-bd25-4e29-a6ee-987d2cf15312 1.4 Participants People and organizations requiring reliable means of identifying the virtual organization, its information resources, and parties responsible for attributable actions. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing identity, authentication, naming, addressing, hosting, or related capabilities. Required capability: provide persistent identification sufficient to distinguish the virtual organization and information objects that need to be referenced reliably. ^^ Conditional capability: authenticate people, organizations, or agents when access, authority, confidentiality, accountability, legal obligations, financial transactions, or other risks require verified identity. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies and services include domain names, URLs and URIs, UUIDs, email addresses, federated identity services, single sign-on systems, digital credentials, and decentralized identifiers. StratML Identifier elements can provide persistent identifiers for plans, organizations, goals, objectives, and other supported information objects. Participation Define the minimum conditions under which people, organizations, and authorized agents can begin contributing productively toward shared objectives. _95df1b53-290c-4ec2-8349-5832f8b59ecb 1.5 Participants People and organizations seeking to contribute toward shared objectives with minimal unnecessary barriers and obligations. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents authorized to contribute or act on behalf of participants within defined boundaries. Required capability: communicate participation requirements and provide a practical means for stakeholders to begin contributing without unnecessary procedural, technological, or institutional barriers. ^^ The minimum viable participation requirement should be no greater than necessary for the contribution being made. Formal membership, recurring meetings, adoption of a common technology platform, or acceptance of extensive governance procedures should not be prerequisites unless the nature of the activity demonstrates their necessity. ^^ Conditional capabilities include authorization, role assignment, terms of participation, confidentiality agreements, credential verification, consent management, and delegation of authority to agents when corresponding risks or responsibilities exist. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include web forms, email, collaborative workspaces, project-management systems, identity and access-management services, electronic agreement services, and AI assistants. Machine-readable plans such as StratML documents can enable participants and agents to discover objectives and determine where their capabilities or interests may contribute without requiring conventional membership processes. Participation Enable people, organizations, and authorized agents to discover relevant opportunities, access needed information, and contribute productively with minimal unnecessary effort. _2a338cb0-860c-4147-bfd0-9483228738b7 2 Participants People and organizations contributing or considering contributions toward shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents supporting discovery, notification, access, and participation within authorized boundaries. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing communications, discovery, collaboration, notification, and related capabilities. Participation should be possible without requiring stakeholders to monitor numerous information sources, attend recurring meetings, adopt a single communications platform, or repeatedly search for opportunities to contribute. Virtual organizations should make relevant opportunities discoverable and, where practical, enable participants and their authorized agents to receive notifications based upon explicitly expressed interests, objectives, capabilities, and responsibilities. Discovery Enable stakeholders and authorized agents to discover objectives, participants, resources, activities, and opportunities relevant to their interests and capabilities. _a00dc33e-41b3-46c9-97b5-65883c5caba0 2.1 Participants People and organizations seeking objectives, resources, collaborators, or opportunities relevant to their interests and capabilities. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents authorized to discover relevant information and opportunities on behalf of participants. Required capability: provide searchable or otherwise discoverable information sufficient for stakeholders to identify relevant objectives, activities, participants, resources, and opportunities. ^^ Enhancing capability: support semantic discovery and matching based upon relationships among objectives, stakeholder interests, capabilities, resources, and results rather than relying solely upon keywords. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and technologies include Web search engines, organizational search services, professional networks, directories, repositories, databases, knowledge graphs, semantic search systems, AI assistants, and StratML-based search services. Structured StratML objectives and stakeholder relationships can support discovery and matching across independently maintained plans. ^^ For a specific example, see https://search.aboutthem.info/ Access Provide participants timely access to information and resources needed to understand objectives and make authorized contributions. _67839662-55e0-4808-aa53-93ba48fa6af8 2.2 Participants People and organizations requiring information and resources needed for their authorized contributions. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing hosting, storage, access management, sharing, and related capabilities. Required capability: make information and resources needed for participation persistently accessible to authorized stakeholders without unnecessary dependence upon particular individuals, devices, locations, or synchronous interactions. ^^ Conditional capabilities include access controls, encryption, confidentiality protections, retention requirements, version controls, and audit records when warranted by the sensitivity or importance of the information. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include websites, shared file services, document-management systems, wikis, repositories, Google Drive and Docs, Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, GitHub, GitLab, Nextcloud, and comparable services. Open and portable formats can reduce dependency upon particular providers. Asynchronous Engagement Enable participants to communicate, deliberate, review information, and contribute without requiring simultaneous availability. _a04c1f3b-b432-479f-8d79-9cdae874b71c 2.3 Participants People and organizations contributing at times appropriate to their circumstances, responsibilities, and availability. Required capability: support persistent asynchronous communication sufficient to conduct the essential business of the virtual organization. ^^ Synchronous communication may supplement asynchronous processes when real-time interaction provides sufficient additional value, including relationship building, rapid problem resolution, sensitive discussion, or celebration. Recurring meetings should not be required merely to compensate for inadequate information, notification, coordination, or decision-recording capabilities. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and protocols include email, mailing lists, discussion forums, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Discourse, Matrix, project-management discussions, issue trackers, collaborative documents, and persistent AI-assisted workspaces. Email standards and interoperable messaging protocols illustrate how communications can remain useful across independently chosen applications. ^^ Submitter's Note: Engagement should focus explicitly on the inputs and processes required to achieve the objectives. One version of the StratML stylesheet includes mailto comment links on each goal and objective. However, the most useful inputs are not merely comments but rather resources required to transform intentions into results. Notification Notify stakeholders and authorized agents of information, events, requests, decisions, and opportunities relevant to their interests, objectives, responsibilities, or contributions. _dd1c3247-c406-4fe7-983e-6c4a2a31d828 2.4 Participants People and organizations receiving information relevant to their interests, responsibilities, and potential contributions. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents monitoring relevant information and notifying participants when attention or action may be warranted. Required capability: provide practical means for participants to receive relevant notifications without continually monitoring every organizational information source. ^^ Enhancing capability: enable subscriptions, filters, rules, semantic matching, and authorized AI agents to determine which developments warrant a participant's attention. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and technologies include email notifications, RSS or Atom feeds, Web notifications, calendar alerts, project-management notifications, messaging integrations, webhooks, automation services, and AI assistants. Machine-readable objectives and stakeholder relationships expressed in formats such as StratML can provide structured inputs for objective-based notification and matching. Contribution Enable participants and authorized agents to contribute information, knowledge, work products, resources, decisions, and other capabilities toward shared objectives. _cbb436d9-dac7-4fb9-9964-9d35650efce8 2.5 Participants People and organizations making contributions toward shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents making authorized contributions or assisting participants in doing so. Required capability: provide practical means for stakeholders to contribute without requiring adoption of unnecessary organizational procedures or a single common user interface. ^^ Conditional capability: record attribution, provenance, authorization, approval, intellectual-property status, or other information when the nature of a contribution requires it. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include email, shared documents, wikis, content-management systems, GitHub and GitLab repositories, issue trackers, project-management systems, databases, forms, APIs, and AI assistants. Interoperable data formats and APIs can enable contributions made through different interfaces to become part of a shared body of organizational information. Coordination Coordinate activities, responsibilities, resources, decisions, and dependencies required to achieve shared objectives. _4b4492ee-16da-4b8c-8bdc-011e7c9b8074 3 Participants People and organizations coordinating their contributions toward shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents supporting authorized coordination, matching, monitoring, and follow-up activities. Resource Providers People and organizations providing resources whose availability and use may require coordination. Coordination should focus on relationships among objectives, contributions, responsibilities, resources, dependencies, and results rather than on organizational activity for its own sake. Information needed for coordination should be persistent and accessible so that recurring meetings are not required merely to determine who is doing what, what has been decided, what resources are available, or what needs attention. Activities Relate activities and contributions to the shared objectives they are intended to advance. _6559b47d-a717-4e60-a641-4bf34299420c 3.1 Participants People and organizations performing activities and making contributions toward shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents assisting in relating activities and contributions to shared objectives. Required capability: maintain sufficient relationships among objectives, activities, contributions, and responsible parties to enable participants to understand how work advances desired results. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include task and project-management systems, issue trackers, workflow systems, shared calendars, GitHub, GitLab, Trello, Asana, Jira, and StratML. StratML can provide persistent references to the goals and objectives to which activities managed in other systems contribute. Responsibilities Make responsibilities and commitments sufficiently explicit for participants and authorized agents to coordinate contributions and follow up when necessary. _50d81b93-d595-4996-8b70-bb646712e2ae 3.2 Participants People and organizations accepting or coordinating responsibilities related to shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents authorized to monitor commitments, dependencies, deadlines, and follow-up requirements. Required capability: record responsibilities or commitments when coordinated action depends upon knowing who or what is expected to act. ^^ Not every contribution requires formal assignment. Responsibilities should be made explicit only to the extent necessary for coordination and accountability. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include task-management systems, issue trackers, workflow applications, shared action registers, calendars, collaborative documents, and AI assistants capable of tracking authorized commitments and follow-up actions. Resources Identify and match available resources and capabilities with needs associated with shared objectives. _a952734d-b48f-459f-b7d2-46f05c2a3130 3.3 Participants People and organizations requiring or offering resources and capabilities relevant to shared objectives. Resource Providers People and organizations making financial, informational, technological, human, or other resources available. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents assisting in discovery and matching of needs, resources, and capabilities. Required capability: communicate resource needs and available capabilities sufficiently to enable practical matching and allocation. ^^ Conditional capabilities include budgeting, accounting, procurement, contracting, payment processing, inventory management, and other controls when financial or physical resources require them. ^^ Enhancing capability: automatically match needs with potentially relevant resources, expertise, services, or collaborators. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include directories, spreadsheets, databases, marketplaces, professional networks, financial-management systems, procurement services, knowledge graphs, semantic matching services, and AI assistants. Machine-readable objectives and stakeholder relationships expressed in StratML can provide context for matching resources and capabilities to desired results. Dependencies Identify relationships among activities, decisions, resources, and results whose sequencing or completion affects other contributions. _8df26c47-ec65-4f2e-ae39-ae09cb5b589d 3.4 Participants People and organizations whose contributions depend upon or affect other activities, resources, decisions, or results. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents authorized to identify, monitor, and communicate relevant dependencies. Required capability: represent and communicate material dependencies when one contribution, decision, resource, or result affects another. ^^ Enhancing capability: detect dependencies, conflicts, bottlenecks, duplication, and opportunities for parallel activity automatically. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and technologies include project-management systems, dependency graphs, issue trackers, workflow engines, knowledge graphs, visualization tools, and AI-assisted analysis. Decisions Make and preserve decisions at the lowest level of formality consistent with their significance, consequences, and accountability requirements. _429c15e2-5f87-45dd-99b5-5a777548053b 3.5 Participants People and organizations participating in, affected by, or responsible for implementing organizational decisions. Required capability: preserve consequential decisions, their status, and sufficient context to enable affected participants to understand and act upon them. ^^ Decision-making need not require meetings. Many decisions can be proposed, discussed, revised, approved, and recorded asynchronously. ^^ Conditional capabilities include voting, quorum determination, formal approval workflows, digital signatures, conflict-of-interest disclosures, appeals, and immutable audit records when governance, legal, contractual, financial, or regulatory requirements make them necessary. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include collaborative documents, discussion forums, issue trackers, decision logs, polling and voting systems, workflow applications, electronic signature services, and governance platforms. Synchronization Use synchronous interaction when simultaneous participation provides sufficient value to justify the additional coordination burden. _efaa6f62-1690-47c7-a45b-28b7eda3773d 3.6 Participants People and organizations engaging in synchronous interaction when real-time communication materially improves coordination or relationships. Conditional capability: provide real-time voice, video, messaging, screen sharing, or physical interaction when the nature of an activity warrants simultaneous participation. ^^ Potentially valuable uses include rapid resolution of complex or urgent issues, sensitive conversations, relationship building, brainstorming, negotiation, training, and celebration. Synchronous interaction should complement rather than substitute for persistent information, explicit objectives, documented decisions, and effective asynchronous coordination. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, telephone services, real-time messaging applications, virtual whiteboards, and in-person gatherings. Agent Coordination Enable authorized agents to assist in coordinating information, responsibilities, resources, dependencies, decisions, and follow-up actions. _90cc59df-9151-475e-8206-e685b99b7e91 3.7 Participants People and organizations authorizing, supervising, or benefiting from agent-assisted coordination. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents performing authorized coordination functions in support of shared objectives. Enhancing capability: enable authorized agents to monitor relevant information, identify potential matches and dependencies, summarize developments, surface exceptions, remind responsible parties, and recommend coordination actions. ^^ Conditional capabilities include authentication, authorization, delegation, provenance, logging, human review, revocation, and other controls proportionate to the authority and consequences of agent actions. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies include AI assistants, workflow agents, automation services, event-driven integrations, APIs, webhooks, semantic technologies, and knowledge graphs. Machine-readable plans such as StratML documents can provide agents with explicit objectives, stakeholders, and performance context against which potential coordination actions can be evaluated. Interoperability Enable organizational information, tools, applications, services, and agents to work together without unnecessary dependence upon particular platforms or providers. _b30dc54f-e102-471b-b34e-dd715e9a4e90 4 Participants People and organizations using diverse tools, applications, and services to participate in pursuit of shared objectives. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents exchanging and processing authorized organizational information across systems and services. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing tools, applications, services, standards, protocols, interfaces, and infrastructure supporting interoperability. Virtual organizations should avoid unnecessary dependence upon a single application, service, provider, or user interface. Interoperability enables participants to use tools suited to their circumstances while sharing sufficient information to coordinate around common objectives. ^^ Open standards, documented interfaces, portable data formats, persistent identifiers, and machine-readable information can reduce switching costs and enable new tools and services to participate without requiring wholesale replacement of existing infrastructure. Structured Information Represent organizational objectives, stakeholders, activities, resources, decisions, and results in forms that can be reliably interpreted and related across systems. _14d9d8b7-e79e-493f-8383-e92e18c7aa72 4.1 Participants People and organizations creating, using, exchanging, or relying upon organizational information. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents processing structured organizational information in support of shared objectives. Required capability: preserve organizational information in sufficiently structured and persistent forms to support reliable retrieval, interpretation, exchange, and reuse. ^^ The degree of structure required should be proportional to the need for interoperability and automation. Human-readable documents may be sufficient for some purposes, while cross-system discovery, matching, reporting, and agent interaction may require standardized machine-readable structures. ^^ Examples of potential supporting standards and technologies include XML, JSON, RDF, JSON-LD, schema languages, controlled vocabularies, metadata standards, knowledge graphs, and StratML. ISO 17469-1 StratML provides a standardized XML vocabulary for strategic plans, while ANSI/AIIM 22:2017 Part 2 extends the model to performance plans and reports. Interfaces Provide practical means for authorized tools, applications, services, and agents to exchange organizational information and invoke relevant capabilities. _8e6cfb96-026d-4521-a179-ac48f8c6cdc9 4.2 Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing interfaces through which information and capabilities can be exchanged among systems. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents using authorized interfaces to retrieve information and perform permitted actions. Required capability: provide practical means to retrieve and exchange information needed for continuing organizational operation without requiring exclusive use of a particular user interface. ^^ Conditional capability: provide programmatic interfaces when automated exchange, integration, scale, timeliness, or agent interaction makes them necessary. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies include APIs, web services, webhooks, feeds, file exchange, email protocols, synchronization services, and event-driven messaging. REST, HTTP, RSS, Atom, SMTP, IMAP, WebDAV, and comparable open protocols illustrate mechanisms through which independently developed applications may interoperate. Portability Enable authorized stakeholders to retain, export, transfer, and reuse organizational information when tools, services, providers, or organizational arrangements change. _3510c22b-0ba4-44a6-842c-15e7d662ba98 4.3 Participants People and organizations requiring continuing access to organizational information despite changes in supporting technologies or providers. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing storage, export, migration, conversion, synchronization, and related capabilities. Required capability: enable organizational information needed for continuity to be retrieved in usable form independently of the continued availability or selection of a particular service provider. ^^ Portability includes more than downloading files. Relationships among objectives, stakeholders, decisions, contributions, resources, and results should be preserved where those relationships are important to continuing organizational operation. ^^ Examples of potential supporting formats and technologies include XML, JSON, CSV, RDF, standardized document formats, repository export functions, synchronization services, and data-conversion tools. StratML can provide a portable standardized representation of strategic planning and performance information independently of the application used to create or display it. Linkage Maintain persistent relationships among organizational information objects distributed across independently managed systems and services. _e42b907a-9173-4710-a8dd-388a51038982 4.4 Participants People and organizations relying upon relationships among distributed organizational information and resources. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents traversing authorized relationships among objectives, stakeholders, activities, resources, decisions, and results. Required capability: provide persistent references when organizational information maintained in one location depends upon or relates materially to information maintained elsewhere. ^^ Enhancing capability: represent relationships semantically so that people and agents can traverse networks of objectives, stakeholders, resources, activities, and results across organizational and technological boundaries. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies include URLs, URIs, UUIDs, hyperlinks, linked data, RDF, knowledge graphs, persistent identifiers, and graph databases. StratML identifiers and relationship structures can support linking among strategic plans and between strategic information and resources maintained in other systems. Agent Readiness Make authorized organizational information sufficiently explicit and machine-accessible for automated and AI-enabled agents to interpret and use reliably. _ed3293ee-6f96-415d-b7f6-f5fecfc751b9 4.5 Participants People and organizations benefiting from or authorizing agent-assisted access to organizational information and capabilities. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents interpreting organizational information and interacting with authorized tools and services. Enhancing capability: enable agents to discover and interpret objectives, stakeholder relationships, responsibilities, resources, performance information, and authorized actions without depending entirely upon inference from unstructured information. ^^ Structured information can reduce ambiguity and provide explicit context against which agent-generated recommendations or actions can be evaluated. Human-readable interfaces can remain simple while underlying standardized information structures support machine interaction. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies include structured data, APIs, semantic technologies, knowledge graphs, machine-readable schemas, AI assistants, and agent frameworks. StratML can provide explicit machine-readable strategic context, enabling agents to relate information and potential actions to documented goals, objectives, stakeholders, and performance indicators rather than relying solely upon conversational context. Substitutability Enable supporting tools, applications, services, and providers to be replaced when alternatives better satisfy organizational requirements. _54cdbe38-c763-458f-8781-6c9e3f619d82 4.6 Participants People and organizations benefiting from the ability to adopt more suitable supporting capabilities as requirements and technologies change. Service Providers Organizations and individuals offering alternative implementations of capabilities required by virtual organizations. Required capability: avoid unnecessary technical barriers that prevent replacement of supporting tools or services while preserving information essential to organizational continuity. ^^ No particular product or service should become an organizational requirement merely because it was selected during formation. Continued use should depend upon its contribution to requirements and objectives. ^^ Open standards, portable data, documented interfaces, and persistent identifiers can enable alternative implementations to compete on usefulness rather than on the cost of escaping proprietary dependencies. Examples include alternative email clients using common protocols, different applications processing XML or JSON, multiple repository clients using Git, and different applications processing StratML documents. Performance Make progress, contributions, results, and supporting evidence sufficiently explicit to assess achievement of shared objectives and guide further action. _3a682fbe-3e3d-4f35-a7fb-1d9d9d5a3da2 5 Participants People and organizations contributing toward, assessing, or relying upon results associated with shared objectives. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose interests provide relevant perspectives on the value and effects of organizational results. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents supporting authorized monitoring, analysis, reporting, and assessment of performance information. Virtual organizations should be oriented toward results rather than organizational activity for its own sake. Performance information should be no more elaborate than necessary to determine whether objectives are being advanced, whether contributions are producing useful results, and whether changes are warranted. ^^ Where quantitative measurement is impractical or inappropriate, qualitative evidence and stakeholder feedback may provide useful indications of progress and results. Indicators Identify observable indicators sufficient to assess progress toward and achievement of shared objectives. _c3781a3a-b264-4a3d-9e38-5f7d0f9a96c1 5.1 Participants People and organizations defining, producing, interpreting, or using indicators of progress and results. Required capability: associate shared objectives with observable evidence sufficient to determine whether meaningful progress or results are occurring. ^^ Indicators should measure results as directly as practical and should not be multiplied merely because supporting technologies make additional data easy to collect. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include spreadsheets, databases, analytics platforms, dashboards, survey systems, project-management applications, business intelligence services, and StratML. ANSI/AIIM 22:2017 Part 2 provides standardized structures for associating performance indicators, measurement dimensions, targets, and actual results with strategic objectives. Evidence Capture and preserve evidence needed to substantiate material claims about activities, contributions, progress, and results. _354e5cd9-4c19-4f20-b70f-2301ea7c58a0 5.2 Participants People and organizations producing, supplying, reviewing, or relying upon evidence of activities and results. Beneficiaries People and organizations providing evidence and feedback concerning the effects and value of organizational results. Required capability: preserve sufficient evidence to support consequential performance claims and organizational learning. ^^ Evidence may include quantitative measurements, completed work products, transactions, observations, stakeholder feedback, decisions, records of contributions, or other verifiable information appropriate to the objective. ^^ Conditional capabilities include provenance, audit trails, digital signatures, timestamps, immutable records, independent verification, and formal evaluation when the significance or consequences of performance claims warrant them. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include document repositories, version-control systems, databases, survey services, analytics systems, transaction records, digital signature services, logging systems, and evidence repositories. Contributions Relate significant contributions to the objectives and results they are intended to advance. _42bd28db-b92d-4983-b2cf-b44f3c6779a0 5.3 Participants People and organizations whose contributions may be related to shared objectives and resulting outcomes. Resource Providers People and organizations whose resources support activities and results associated with shared objectives. Required capability: preserve relationships between material contributions and the objectives they support when those relationships are needed for coordination, accountability, recognition, learning, or resource allocation. ^^ Attribution should be proportionate to organizational needs and should not impose unnecessary reporting burdens on participants. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include version-control systems, project-management applications, issue trackers, workflow systems, collaborative documents, transaction records, contribution logs, and provenance systems. Persistent objective identifiers, including those represented in StratML plans, can provide common reference points for contributions recorded in otherwise independent systems. Status Make current progress, significant changes, unresolved issues, and material exceptions readily understandable to relevant stakeholders. _fef88277-c9a6-417a-9ba0-8506bd47d42d 5.4 Participants People and organizations requiring current information to coordinate activities, allocate attention, and determine appropriate next actions. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents monitoring performance information and surfacing material changes or exceptions. Required capability: provide relevant stakeholders with practical means of determining the current status of objectives without requiring recurring meetings or repeated requests for status reports. ^^ Enhancing capability: automatically detect and surface significant deviations, unmet dependencies, emerging risks, completed objectives, and other conditions warranting attention. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include dashboards, project-management systems, issue trackers, status pages, notification services, analytics platforms, visualization tools, and AI assistants. StratML Part 2 performance information can provide standardized inputs for dashboards, visualizations, notifications, and automated status summaries. Feedback Obtain and relate stakeholder feedback to the objectives, activities, services, and results to which it applies. _17a132ad-ea14-499d-9b6f-61936e95c881 5.5 Participants People and organizations providing or using feedback to improve activities and results. Beneficiaries People and organizations providing perspectives on whether organizational results address their interests and needs. Required capability: provide practical means for relevant stakeholders to supply feedback and for that feedback to be associated with the objectives or results to which it pertains. ^^ Feedback mechanisms should enable learning without assuming that every preference or comment constitutes evidence of effectiveness. Feedback should be considered together with other relevant evidence and the organization's stated objectives. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include surveys, web forms, issue trackers, discussion forums, comment systems, customer or constituent relationship management systems, interviews, analytics services, and AI-assisted qualitative analysis. Reporting Communicate progress and results in forms appropriate for participants, beneficiaries, resource providers, and authorized agents. _70540458-e155-4dbb-8c93-080ccfb65760 5.6 Participants People and organizations using performance information to coordinate activities and assess progress. Beneficiaries People and organizations interested in the results and effects of organizational activities. Resource Providers People and organizations requiring evidence concerning the use and results of resources they provide. Required capability: make material performance information available in understandable forms appropriate to relevant stakeholders. ^^ Reporting should, where practical, be generated from information already maintained for operational purposes rather than requiring participants to recreate the same information in separate reports. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, applications, services, and standards include websites, dashboards, automated reports, spreadsheets, databases, visualization systems, business intelligence applications, AI-generated summaries, and StratML. ANSI/AIIM 22:2017 Part 2 provides a standardized machine-readable format for performance plans and reports that can support multiple human-readable presentations from the same underlying information. Assessment Assess evidence and stakeholder feedback to determine whether objectives, activities, resources, and organizational arrangements should be continued, changed, expanded, reduced, or concluded. _38ce1dfc-9c41-41d6-9981-442bdd56a996 5.7 Participants People and organizations using performance evidence to evaluate and improve organizational activities and arrangements. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents assisting authorized stakeholders in analyzing evidence and identifying patterns, exceptions, and potential improvements. Required capability: periodically or conditionally assess available evidence against stated objectives and use the findings to inform subsequent action. ^^ Enhancing capability: use analytics, visualization, simulation, and AI-assisted analysis to identify patterns, anomalies, relationships, and potential improvements that may not be readily apparent from individual observations. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include analytics platforms, statistical tools, dashboards, visualization systems, evaluation frameworks, simulation tools, and AI assistants. Structured objectives and performance information represented in StratML can provide explicit context for comparing intended results with reported evidence. ^^ Submitter's Note: Stylesheets can enable users to apply AI to analyze risks associated with goals and visualize performance indicators required to track the realization of objectives. Governance Establish only the authority, accountability, safeguards, and decision procedures necessary to support achievement of shared objectives. _bcec6931-3014-4722-91c5-c8b83f2bef41 6 Participants People and organizations exercising, delegating, accepting, or being affected by organizational authority and responsibilities. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose interests may be affected by organizational decisions and safeguards. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents exercising explicitly authorized functions subject to appropriate oversight and controls. Governance should be proportionate to the objectives, activities, resources, risks, and legal obligations of the virtual organization. Formal structures should be established when demonstrated requirements justify them rather than assumed to be prerequisites for productive collaboration. ^^ Governance arrangements should be sufficiently explicit for participants and authorized agents to determine who may make consequential decisions, exercise particular authorities, access protected resources, and accept obligations on behalf of the organization. Authority Define and communicate authority to make consequential decisions, commit resources, grant access, and act on behalf of the virtual organization. _7a7b67c5-02d8-432f-a878-200d099d4444 6.1 Participants People and organizations granting, receiving, exercising, or relying upon organizational authority. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents exercising specifically delegated authority within defined boundaries. Required capability: make authority explicit whenever consequential actions depend upon knowing who or what is authorized to act. ^^ Authority should be no broader or more centralized than necessary. Participants may coordinate voluntarily without creating formal authority relationships when their activities do not require them. ^^ Conditional capabilities include role-based permissions, delegated authority, approval workflows, digital credentials, signatures, and formal governing instruments when organizational activities warrant them. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include identity and access-management systems, role and permission systems, workflow applications, electronic signature services, digital credentials, governance platforms, and authorization mechanisms for AI agents. Accountability Relate consequential actions, decisions, commitments, and uses of resources to responsible people, organizations, or authorized agents. _3abdd0f2-607f-400a-b8e9-8c086e57b79e 6.2 Participants People and organizations responsible for consequential organizational actions, decisions, commitments, and resources. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents whose consequential actions require attribution to their authorization and responsible parties. Required capability: preserve sufficient attribution to establish responsibility for consequential organizational actions and decisions. ^^ Accountability requirements should be proportionate to consequences. Informal contributions need not generate elaborate audit records merely because technology makes such tracking possible. ^^ Conditional capabilities include provenance records, audit trails, timestamps, approval histories, digital signatures, transaction logs, and immutable records when warranted by legal, financial, security, or other risks. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies and services include version-control systems, workflow histories, transaction logs, identity systems, provenance frameworks, electronic signatures, and audit-management systems. Access Control Protect information, resources, and capabilities while providing authorized stakeholders the access needed to contribute effectively. _03e4aad7-2807-439d-9d23-64393639d181 6.3 Participants People and organizations requiring appropriate access to information, resources, and organizational capabilities. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing authentication, authorization, security, privacy, and related capabilities. Required capability: control access when unrestricted availability would create material privacy, security, contractual, financial, intellectual-property, or other risks. ^^ Information that does not require restriction should remain as accessible as practical to reduce unnecessary participation and coordination barriers. ^^ Conditional capabilities include multifactor authentication, role-based or attribute-based access controls, encryption, credential management, secure sharing, data-loss prevention, and security monitoring. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include identity providers, single sign-on services, password managers, access-management platforms, repository permissions, encrypted storage and communications services, and security-monitoring systems. Safeguards Apply safeguards proportionate to risks that could materially impair objectives, stakeholders, resources, information, or organizational continuity. _270427e7-bc28-4358-b13c-11b967160151 6.4 Participants People and organizations identifying, applying, or relying upon safeguards appropriate to organizational risks. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose interests may require protection from material adverse effects of organizational activities. Required capability: identify material risks and establish safeguards sufficient to maintain reliable operation and protect relevant stakeholder interests. ^^ Safeguards should be risk-based rather than accumulated as procedural requirements without demonstrated need. ^^ Conditional capabilities may include backups, recovery procedures, redundancy, cybersecurity controls, privacy protections, moderation, fraud prevention, insurance, conflict-of-interest controls, and independent review. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include backup and recovery systems, cybersecurity platforms, privacy-management services, moderation tools, fraud-detection systems, risk registers, monitoring services, and automated anomaly detection. Rules Document only those rules and procedures necessary to coordinate participation, protect stakeholder interests, and satisfy organizational obligations. _4235c5e0-38f4-483a-a34a-257d86912c01 6.5 Participants People and organizations developing, accepting, applying, or being affected by organizational rules and procedures. Required capability: make applicable rules and procedures persistently accessible and understandable to affected stakeholders. ^^ Rules should address demonstrated coordination, accountability, risk, or compliance requirements rather than replicate conventional organizational practices by default. Their continuing value should be subject to evidence and review. ^^ Conditional capabilities include machine-readable policies, automated policy enforcement, version histories, acknowledgment records, and rule-based workflow when organizational scale or complexity warrants them. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and technologies include websites, wikis, policy repositories, collaborative documents, version-control systems, workflow engines, policy-as-code systems, and machine-readable rights and permissions frameworks. ^^ Submitter's Note: Consequential rules should be published as model performance plans in open, standard, machine-readable format, like StratML Part 2, rather than in unstructured narrative. Compliance Identify and satisfy legal, contractual, regulatory, fiduciary, and other externally imposed requirements applicable to organizational activities. _84d60fc2-d447-4446-853d-13ec5547ab86 6.6 Participants People and organizations responsible for identifying or satisfying obligations applicable to organizational activities. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing legal, financial, compliance, security, records-management, or related capabilities. Conditional capability: identify and satisfy external obligations when the organization's activities, legal status, jurisdiction, resources, data, transactions, or stakeholder relationships make them applicable. ^^ A virtual organization need not acquire legal personality merely because participants collaborate toward shared objectives. However, incorporation, contractual arrangements, insurance, accounting controls, tax administration, records management, or other institutional structures may become necessary as activities and liabilities develop. ^^ Examples of potential supporting services include legal counsel, incorporation and registered-agent services, accounting and tax services, contract-management systems, electronic signature services, compliance-management platforms, records-management systems, and insurance services. Agent Governance Define and control the authority, responsibilities, information access, and accountability of automated and AI-enabled agents. _f4e0c033-49cd-4577-adc4-f95e2b342297 6.7 Participants People and organizations authorizing, supervising, constraining, reviewing, or relying upon agent actions. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents operating within explicitly defined authorities and safeguards. Conditional capability: establish controls whenever agents can access protected information, communicate externally, alter organizational records, commit resources, make consequential decisions, or take other actions on behalf of participants or the organization. ^^ Relevant controls may include explicit delegation, least-privilege access, human approval thresholds, provenance, logging, monitoring, spending or transaction limits, expiration of authority, and immediate revocation. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies include identity and access-management systems, agent frameworks, permission systems, API credentials, workflow approvals, sandboxed execution environments, audit logs, policy engines, and AI governance tools. Machine-readable objectives and policies can provide context for determining whether proposed agent actions fall within authorized purposes and boundaries. Adaptation Adapt objectives, structures, processes, participation arrangements, and supporting technologies in response to evidence, experience, changing circumstances, and emerging capabilities. _e612dd7b-1de1-4928-99b1-6baac38cd008 7 Participants People and organizations evaluating and improving organizational arrangements and supporting capabilities. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose experience and feedback may indicate needs or opportunities for adaptation. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing existing or alternative tools, applications, services, and infrastructure. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents assisting in identifying, evaluating, implementing, or monitoring potential adaptations. Virtual organizations should evolve rather than institutionalize initial assumptions merely because they have become familiar. Objectives, structures, processes, rules, technologies, and participation arrangements should remain subject to revision when evidence indicates that alternatives may better advance shared objectives. ^^ Interoperability, portability, and substitutability reduce the cost of adaptation by enabling individual components to change without requiring reconstruction of the entire organization. Review Review objectives, results, stakeholder feedback, organizational arrangements, and supporting capabilities when evidence or changing circumstances indicate that reconsideration may be warranted. _27ee800b-2c76-47de-a213-56804e7199bb 7.1 Participants People and organizations reviewing organizational effectiveness and identifying potential improvements. Beneficiaries People and organizations providing relevant evidence and perspectives concerning organizational results and effects. Required capability: provide practical means to review whether objectives, activities, structures, rules, technologies, and participation arrangements continue to contribute sufficient value. ^^ Review need not depend upon fixed meeting cycles. It may be triggered by performance results, stakeholder feedback, unresolved problems, significant changes in circumstances, emerging opportunities, or the availability of substantially better capabilities. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include performance dashboards, analytics systems, surveys, issue trackers, retrospectives, review workflows, collaborative documents, visualization tools, and AI-assisted analysis. StratML plans and performance reports can provide structured baselines against which changes in objectives, results, and organizational arrangements can be considered. Experimentation Test promising changes on a scale appropriate to their costs, risks, reversibility, and potential benefits before institutionalizing them broadly. _1a3b355f-302b-4acf-83e0-7252940b3e15 7.2 Participants People and organizations proposing, conducting, evaluating, or being affected by organizational experiments. Enhancing capability: enable low-cost experimentation with alternative processes, technologies, participation arrangements, and organizational structures while preserving the ability to compare results and reverse unsuccessful changes. ^^ Experiments should be evaluated against the objectives they are intended to advance rather than adopted primarily because a technology, method, or organizational practice is fashionable or familiar. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and methods include pilot projects, prototypes, sandboxes, feature flags, controlled trials, simulations, surveys, analytics systems, collaborative testing environments, and AI-assisted scenario analysis. Processes Modify or discontinue organizational processes when evidence indicates that alternative approaches can achieve objectives with less delay, effort, cost, or other unnecessary burden. _4b975934-ac9e-42e3-978f-1040ab0ca606 7.3 Participants People and organizations using, evaluating, or improving processes supporting shared objectives. Required capability: enable processes to be changed without unnecessary disruption to organizational information, relationships, responsibilities, or results. ^^ Existing processes should not be automated merely because they already exist. Before automating a process, participants should consider whether the process itself remains necessary and whether its intended result can be achieved more directly. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and methods include workflow systems, process mapping, automation services, issue trackers, collaborative documentation, analytics, process mining, and AI-assisted workflow analysis. Technologies Replace, combine, or augment tools, applications, services, and infrastructure when alternatives better satisfy organizational requirements. _b5ed8812-d12b-485a-8f8d-5595c2ddc067 7.4 Participants People and organizations evaluating and using technologies supporting organizational activities. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing existing or alternative technological capabilities. Required capability: preserve sufficient portability and interoperability to permit replacement or augmentation of supporting technologies without unnecessary loss of organizational information or disruption of essential capabilities. ^^ Technology selections should be periodically reconsidered in light of changing requirements, costs, usability, interoperability, security, provider reliability, and emerging alternatives. ^^ Examples may include replacing or combining communications platforms, document repositories, project-management systems, identity services, hosting providers, analytics tools, AI services, or other supporting technologies. Open standards and portable formats can reduce the cost and risk of such transitions. Structures Develop, modify, or discontinue organizational structures as demonstrated requirements for coordination, authority, accountability, resources, risk, or continuity change. _a57f1ff1-044a-4c27-b878-793b03007a14 7.5 Participants People and organizations establishing, using, evaluating, or changing organizational structures. Required capability: enable organizational structures and roles to evolve without treating arrangements established at formation as permanent. ^^ Additional committees, offices, legal entities, management layers, formal roles, or administrative processes should be established when their expected contribution justifies their costs and constraints. Structures that no longer contribute sufficient value should be simplified or discontinued when practical. ^^ Examples of potential supporting capabilities include organizational directories, role-management systems, governance platforms, collaborative documentation, legal and incorporation services, workflow systems, and responsibility-mapping tools. Automation Automate repetitive or information-intensive activities when automation can reduce participant burden while maintaining appropriate reliability, accountability, and control. _2d4ad5ba-a2e5-41a0-a164-b5c1a0ac7ac1 7.6 Participants People and organizations identifying, authorizing, supervising, or benefiting from appropriate automation. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents performing authorized activities in support of shared objectives. Enhancing capability: automate discovery, notification, matching, summarization, monitoring, reporting, routine workflow, and other activities when doing so improves performance or reduces unnecessary participant effort. ^^ Automation should simplify or eliminate unnecessary work rather than make inefficient processes execute more rapidly. Human review and intervention should remain available where consequences, uncertainty, accountability, or stakeholder interests warrant them. ^^ Examples of potential supporting technologies and services include workflow automation, rules engines, integration platforms, webhooks, AI assistants, AI agents, semantic technologies, knowledge graphs, analytics systems, and automated reporting services. StratML can provide explicit machine-readable objectives and stakeholder relationships against which automated activities can be oriented. Learning Preserve and apply knowledge gained from results, experiments, successes, failures, and changes in organizational arrangements. _2e657b79-3546-44b0-97bf-84344f257f10 7.7 Participants People and organizations contributing to and benefiting from accumulated organizational knowledge. Agents Automated and AI-enabled agents assisting in retrieving, relating, summarizing, and applying accumulated organizational knowledge. Required capability: preserve consequential lessons and make them discoverable when they may improve future decisions or activities. ^^ Organizational learning should be related where practical to the objectives, circumstances, evidence, and results from which lessons were derived so that conclusions are not separated from their relevant context. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and technologies include knowledge bases, wikis, repositories, decision logs, lessons-learned records, knowledge graphs, semantic search, retrieval systems, and AI assistants. Persistent identifiers and structured strategic information can help relate accumulated knowledge to the objectives and results to which it pertains. ^^ Submitter's Note: To facilitate analyses, syntheses, and learning, results should be reported and shared in an open, standard, machine-readable format, like StratML Part 2, and AI should be applied to enable users to tailor their learning to their own objectives. Continuity & Conclusion Preserve essential organizational capabilities and knowledge through transitions and conclude activities or the organization itself when shared objectives no longer justify continuation. _ae3954b5-6078-4146-992e-a4371e45149c 8 Participants People and organizations contributing to, relying upon, transferring, or concluding organizational activities and responsibilities. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose interests may be affected by organizational transitions or conclusion. Resource Providers People and organizations whose resources, obligations, or interests may require appropriate disposition during transitions or conclusion. Service Providers Organizations and individuals supporting preservation, transfer, migration, archiving, termination, and related continuity capabilities. Virtual organizations should not depend unnecessarily upon particular individuals, accounts, applications, providers, or institutional arrangements for their continued operation. Information, authority, access, knowledge, and responsibilities essential to shared objectives should be transferable when participants or supporting technologies change. ^^ Continuation of the organization itself should not become an objective independent of the purposes for which it was established. Completion, suspension, merger, division, or dissolution may represent successful adaptation when continued operation no longer contributes sufficient value. Preservation Preserve organizational information, relationships, records, and knowledge needed for continuing operations, accountability, learning, or future reference. _0492c062-5afb-40ae-a7b5-d12b4d4515bb 8.1 Participants People and organizations creating, maintaining, using, or relying upon organizational information and knowledge. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing storage, backup, archiving, preservation, and migration capabilities. Required capability: preserve information necessary for continuity, accountability, and organizational learning despite changes in participants, technologies, or service providers. ^^ Conditional capabilities include retention schedules, redundant storage, backups, geographic replication, archival formats, integrity verification, legal holds, and records-management controls when the significance or obligations associated with information warrant them. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include document repositories, version-control systems, cloud and local backup services, archival repositories, records-management systems, GitHub, GitLab, institutional repositories, and Internet Archive services where public preservation is appropriate. Open and standardized formats, including StratML for strategic planning and performance information, can improve long-term accessibility independently of the applications originally used to create the information. Succession Transfer responsibilities, authority, information, credentials, and relationships when participants or organizational roles change. _9de147f9-9136-4b1b-ab45-a52277363030 8.2 Participants People and organizations transferring, assuming, or relying upon responsibilities and authority during organizational transitions. Required capability: enable responsibilities and access necessary for continuing operations to be transferred without unnecessary dependence upon departing participants. ^^ No essential organizational capability should depend solely upon an individual's personal account, device, undocumented knowledge, or inaccessible credentials. ^^ Conditional capabilities include credential transfer or replacement, delegated administration, formal appointment, authorization changes, contractual assignments, financial signatory changes, and other transition procedures when corresponding responsibilities exist. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include role-based access systems, password and credential managers, organizational accounts, shared repositories, directories, workflow systems, documentation platforms, and identity-management services. Resilience Maintain or restore essential organizational capabilities when participants, technologies, services, or other dependencies become unavailable. _1efb092a-d291-418b-8226-a91cc19e1512 8.3 Participants People and organizations maintaining, restoring, or relying upon essential organizational capabilities. Service Providers Organizations and individuals providing infrastructure, backup, recovery, redundancy, migration, or alternative services. Required capability: identify dependencies whose failure would materially impair shared objectives and provide recovery or substitution appropriate to their significance. ^^ Conditional capabilities include redundant providers, backup communications channels, disaster recovery, service replication, offline copies, emergency access, and continuity procedures when interruption would create material consequences. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include backup systems, redundant hosting, distributed repositories, alternative communications services, status-monitoring systems, recovery services, and portable data formats. Interoperability and substitutability can provide resilience by allowing alternative tools and providers to assume required capabilities. Archiving Archive completed or inactive organizational information in forms that preserve appropriate context, accessibility, integrity, and discoverability. _f9e5528f-9868-4a0d-83ce-4fad0943f663 8.4 Participants People and organizations preserving or using records of completed organizational activities and results. Beneficiaries People and organizations who may benefit from continuing access to organizational results, evidence, and lessons learned. Required capability: preserve completed plans, consequential decisions, results, and lessons when they retain value for accountability, learning, reuse, or historical reference. ^^ Archived information should retain relationships among objectives, stakeholders, activities, evidence, and results where those relationships are important to understanding its meaning. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools, services, and formats include institutional repositories, document archives, version-control repositories, static websites, records-management systems, persistent identifiers, XML, PDF/A, and other durable formats. StratML documents can preserve strategic and performance context in structured, machine-readable form and can remain processable independently of the application originally used to create them. Conclusion Conclude objectives, activities, or the virtual organization when intended results have been achieved or continued operation is no longer justified. _dad411ce-3fab-475b-909e-f024327fc53d 8.5 Participants People and organizations determining, implementing, or being affected by conclusion of organizational activities. Beneficiaries People and organizations whose interests may be affected by completion or discontinuation of organizational activities. Resource Providers People and organizations whose remaining resources, commitments, or obligations require appropriate disposition. Required capability: determine when objectives or organizational activities have been completed, superseded, suspended, or discontinued and communicate their status to relevant stakeholders. ^^ Conclusion should include appropriate disposition of remaining responsibilities, resources, information, access rights, contractual commitments, and other obligations. ^^ Conditional capabilities include account closure, contract termination, distribution of assets, revocation of credentials, regulatory filings, dissolution of legal entities, final financial reporting, and other procedures required by the organization's activities or legal status. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and services include project closeout workflows, notification systems, records-management services, accounting systems, electronic signature services, legal and corporate services, identity-management systems, and archival repositories. Reuse Make reusable organizational results, knowledge, structures, and lessons available for application to other objectives and organizations when appropriate. _14f4f65e-d805-44a5-a7d9-106f3b2bc055 8.6 Participants People and organizations contributing to or benefiting from reuse of organizational knowledge and results. Beneficiaries People and organizations benefiting from results and knowledge produced through prior organizational activities. Enhancing capability: enable successful plans, methods, information structures, software, data, lessons, and other outputs to be discovered and reused rather than unnecessarily recreated. ^^ Reuse should preserve relevant provenance and context so that experience developed under one set of objectives and circumstances is not assumed to apply unchanged elsewhere. ^^ Examples of potential supporting tools and technologies include public repositories, knowledge bases, template libraries, open-source repositories, data catalogs, persistent identifiers, semantic technologies, knowledge graphs, search services, and AI-assisted retrieval. Published StratML plans and performance reports can enable objectives, stakeholders, indicators, results, and lessons from prior efforts to be discovered and compared with emerging needs. 2026-09-19 https://stratml.us/docs/MP4VO.xml Owen Ambur Owen.Ambur@verizon.net