--- name: sustainment-audit description: "Whether a kaizen event's commitments actually held after it closed — a checklist against the specific practices it was supposed to leave behind, honestly naming which are at risk of lapsing. Use when: An event closed a while ago and you want an honest check on whether its changes actually stuck. You want specific, verifiable practices to check — not a vague \"is it still working?\" gut check. You want lapsed practices named directly so they can be fixed, not quietly forgotten. Not for: The event just closed — give it real time to settle before auditing it; a same-week audit tells you nothing about sustainment. You don't have a real charter or objective to audit against — sharpen that first, or the checklist will be as vague as the input. You're looking to blame someone for a lapsed practice rather than fix it — this is a maintenance tool, not a performance review." --- # Sustainment audit Whether a kaizen event's commitments actually held after it closed — a checklist against the specific practices it was supposed to leave behind, honestly naming which are at risk of lapsing. Family: Kaizen events · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is Most kaizen events are checked once, at the report-out, and never again. A sustainment audit is the follow-up: weeks or months after an event closes, restate what it was supposed to change and get a checklist of specific, verifiable practices to check against reality. It's fine, and honest, if some have lapsed — the whole point is catching that before it's forgotten entirely, not confirming everything is still perfect. ## When to use it Use it when: - An event closed a while ago and you want an honest check on whether its changes actually stuck. - You want specific, verifiable practices to check — not a vague "is it still working?" gut check. - You want lapsed practices named directly so they can be fixed, not quietly forgotten. Not when: - The event just closed — give it real time to settle before auditing it; a same-week audit tells you nothing about sustainment. - You don't have a real charter or objective to audit against — sharpen that first, or the checklist will be as vague as the input. - You're looking to blame someone for a lapsed practice rather than fix it — this is a maintenance tool, not a performance review. ## How to fill it in - **originalObjective** — What was the event's original objective? - **checks** — Drafted from what was supposed to change — specific, checkable practices. Verify each one and check off what's actually still holding. - **narrative** — Drafted from the sustainment checklist. ## What good looks like The example below audits the kaizen event charter's own worked example — the onboarding ticket resolution event — sixty days after it closed. Four of six practices are still holding and two are honestly flagged at risk, rather than the checklist being quietly marked all-clear. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/sustainment-audit ## Common mistakes - **Auditing too soon after the event, before practices have had time to either stick or lapse.** — A sustainment audit measures whether change survived contact with normal operations — that takes weeks, not days. - **Marking a practice as holding because it mostly is, rather than actually verifying it.** — The audit only has value if it reflects reality — a generously-marked checklist can't catch a real lapse before it compounds. - **Treating an at-risk finding as a failure to hide rather than a gap to close.** — Sustainment naturally decays without attention — naming the gap is what makes it fixable, not a verdict on the original event. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Kaizen event charter** (`kaizen-charter`) — The charter's objective and commitments are exactly what this audit checks — audit against the real charter, not a vague memory of the event. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding how much time to give an event before auditing it - Deciding what to do about a practice that's flagged at risk Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting specific, verifiable checks from a description of what was supposed to change - Drafting the narrative from the checklist actually built Drudgery — automated: - Tallying how many practices are still holding - Identifying which practices are at risk - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Sustainment audit is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/sustainment-audit.