Strategy: Stress Scenario

Methodology

Stress Testing combined with Failure Mode Analysis. Deliberately construct extreme but plausible scenarios that maximally challenge the research approach. Identify breaking points, failure modes, and minimum conditions for viability.

Key principles:

• Extreme but plausible: Push parameters to edges without crossing into fantasy
• Failure-seeking: Actively look for conditions that break the approach
• Compound stress: Combine multiple adverse conditions (correlated failures)
• Recovery assessment: For each failure, assess whether recovery is possible

Execution Flow

1. Identify drivers → spawn scenario-driver-identification

• Input: research context, focus on threat vectors
• Output: vulnerability drivers and failure dimensions

1. Construct worst cases → spawn worst-case-construction (×3-5)

• Input: driver extremes, compound combinations
• Output: extreme scenario descriptions

1. Assess impact → spawn scenario-impact-assessment (per worst case)

• Input: stress scenario, research approach
• Output: failure mode analysis, breaking points

1. Score robustness → spawn robustness-scoring

• Input: all stress test results
• Output: stress robustness index, failure threshold map

1. Synthesize → spawn scenario-synthesis

• Input: stress scenarios, failure modes, robustness scores
• Output: risk report with mitigation recommendations

Budget Gate

| Step | Token Budget | Notes | |------|-------------|-------| | Driver identification | 8K | Threat-focused | | Worst-case construction | 12K × N | N = 3-5 stress scenarios | | Impact assessment | 12K × N | Deeper analysis for stress | | Robustness scoring | 10K | Failure threshold mapping | | Synthesis | 12K | Risk mitigation report |

<!-- BEGIN available-tables (generated) -->

Available Tactics

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| Tactic | When to use | | --- | --- | | strategy-robustness-testing | Orchestrates impact assessment and robustness scoring to evaluate research approach resilience across scenarios |

Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| SOP | When to use | | --- | --- | | robustness-scoring | Compute robustness index across scenarios with sensitivity analysis | | scenario-driver-identification | Identify key uncertainty drivers using PESTEL framework scanning | | scenario-impact-assessment | Assess each scenario's impact on the research approach across multiple dimensions | | scenario-synthesis | Comprehensive scenario analysis report synthesizing all scenario work | | worst-case-construction | Construct extreme but plausible worst-case scenarios for stress testing |

<!-- END available-tables (generated) -->