Fulcrum v1.4.2

Fulcrum

Fulcrum is a Decision Architecture sandbox for Windows, Linux and macOS, shipped
with an installer for each.

What's new

• The exported presentation includes drilled-in moves. A plan played while
  focused on a section could export empty; its moves are now recorded so the
  HTML presentation and the JSON plan both carry the full move list.
• Help: Check for updates. A new Help menu item opens the Fulcrum releases
  page in your browser.

Licence

Dual-licensed by component: the model under GPL-3.0 and the user interface under
LGPL-3.0. Both texts ship with the app and are shown under Help.

Fulcrum v1.4.1

Fulcrum 1.4.1

Fulcrum is a Decision Architecture sandbox for Windows, Linux and macOS, shipped
with an installer for each.

What Fulcrum is

Fulcrum turns the Decision Architecture model into something you operate
directly. An organisation is a position: teams that can or cannot decide for
themselves, the dependencies between them and the work they carry. Fulcrum
scores that position from 0 to 100 for structural health, lets you change it
with structural moves and shows the score respond. It is the model from the
books, turned into an engine in your hands.

Why it exists

Organisations rarely fail for lack of effort. They fail structurally: authority
sits in the wrong place, work piles up at boundaries and local incentives pull
against the whole. Those failures are hard to see in a headcount chart and easy
to feel in the slowdown. Fulcrum makes the structure legible and lets you try a
move on the model before you try it on people.

What Fulcrum gives you

• A position you can read. Load an organisation and see its structural
  health as a single 0 to 100 score, with the lagging signals that explain it:
  where work is queuing, where decisions escalate, where rework creeps in and
  where influence has collected without the authority to use it.
• Your own organisation, modelled. Build a structure by hand (nesting
  domains inside domains when it is large) or import a plan you exported
  earlier. A quick wizard gives a fast first position.
• Scale that stays workable. Per-team headcount rolls up through the
  hierarchy to a whole-organisation total, so a hundred-thousand-person
  structure is as workable as a handful of teams. It is descriptive context and
  never bends the structural score.
• A navigable map. See who decides locally against who escalates, with
  dependencies drawn as arrows; drill into a domain then climb back out.
• Moves scored from blunder to great. Delegate authority, stabilise an
  interface, realign incentives or collapse a boundary; each move is judged with
  a plain reason for the verdict.
• A guide to a stronger organisation. Ask for the guide and the planner
  lays out a move-by-move line from where you are to a stronger score, the way
  an engine shows its principal variation. You can play a move straight from the
  guide.
• Take a move back. An undo stack steps the organisation back through the
  moves you have played, from the board or with Ctrl+Z.
• Plans you can keep and share. Create a self-contained HTML presentation of
  your plan to share. Export the plan as JSON to reopen it later and resume the
  organisation with the moves played on it.

How it treats you

• Local-first. Everything runs on your machine. There is no account and no
  server; your organisations never leave it.
• Reachable by keyboard. The whole interface sits on one explicit focus
  ring, so it is navigable without a mouse.
• Never a dead end. An in-app glossary explains any unfamiliar term in one
  click; the Help menu opens the books behind the model.

Who it is for

Software architects, senior and principal engineers, CTOs and the wider
C-suite: the people who answer for how an organisation is shaped and how it
decides.

Where it comes from

The model, the moves and the signals come from the Decision Architecture series
of books by Oliver Ernster. Fulcrum is that book series made playable.

Installing

Fulcrum runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. Download the build for your platform
from the release below.

• Windows. Run the installer. It installs per user with no administrator
  rights, adds Start Menu and desktop shortcuts and registers a normal entry
  under Installed Apps so it removes cleanly.
• Linux. Install the Flatpak. It runs sandboxed and appears in your desktop
  application menu like any other app.
• macOS. Open the disk image and drag Fulcrum into Applications.

Release history

The versions below trace Fulcrum from its first prototype to this release.

• 1.4.1: The move note under the map is a capped, scrollable area, so its
  full text stays reachable on a short screen instead of being clipped.
• 1.4.0: In the organisation map a section's outer ring turns cyan on hover
  to show it opens, with the keyboard selection keeping its amber double outline;
  the focused-section note and map caption now mention clicking a section to
  drill in.
• 1.3.7: Move-gated controls show a red outline while inactive, with an
  "Available once you play a move" tooltip on hover. Right and Left navigate
  every dialog like Tab and Shift+Tab, the guide included, matching the main
  window.
• 1.3.6: Refreshed the website screenshots and captions.
• 1.3.5: Create presentation is disabled until a move is played and is
  reachable from the File menu as well as the toolbar.
• 1.3.4: Added the Create presentation button; file dialogs open in your
  Downloads folder by default.
• 1.3.3: Unified file handling into a single Import and Export of a plan as
  JSON (the structure plus the moves, so it reopens ready to resume), retiring
  the older Save, Load, plan editing and org-state import.
• 1.3.0 to 1.3.2: Compiled with Nuitka on Windows and macOS with a
  source-based Flatpak on Linux; signal detail moved from a hover into a
  magnifier dialog; human-readable UTC timestamps in reports and saved plans;
  fixes to the preview maps, the signal-magnifier alignment, the org editor
  Name column and cross-platform clipping.
• 1.2.x: Keyboard ring refinements: Right and Left mirror Tab and Shift+Tab
  across the main window, stepping cleanly out of an open menu and the map; the
  guide stays open and refreshes after you play a move from it.
• 1.1.x: Preview any guide move from a per-step magnifier; consistent dialog
  focus and tab order from a shared neutral-focus base.
• 1.0.0: Menu-first keyboard navigation and a focus-visible theme; Take a
  move back via an undo stack; play a move straight from the preview dialog.
• 0.x (prototype): The engine took shape: generate or model an organisation,
  score its structural health from 0 to 100, read the lagging signals, navigate
  the map and drill into a section to play it. Per-team headcount rolls up to a
  whole-organisation total (to around 250,000 people), with per-move and
  per-signal detail and the Decision Architecture glossary.

Licence

Dual-licensed by component: the model under GPL-3.0 and the user interface under
LGPL-3.0. Both texts ship with the app and are shown under Help.