The TAP Log.
TAP stands for Touchpoints, Alignments, Problems. It's how SAGE organizes the running record of a program — touchpoints as the calendar surface, alignments as the decisions made in them, problems as the durable threads that connect them.
What's in the TAP Log
- Touchpoint (T)
- A meeting, review, or working session where Problems get discussed and Alignments are reached. Touchpoints carry agendas, attendees, and the items discussed — turning a meeting from an ephemeral event into a searchable record.
- Alignment (A)
- A decision made about a Problem. Alignments carry the decision's rationale, approver, forum (from WS09 Decision Hierarchy), and date — so six months later the decision is retrievable, not remembered.
- Problem (P)
- The durable thread. A problem is anything the program needs to resolve — a risk that might materialize, an issue that has, a dependency that's not confirmed, an assumption that's exposed. Problems remain the thread anchor even though TAP starts with the touchpoint surface.
Actions and Decisions sit alongside the TAP Log as linked entities — each one tied back to the Problem, Alignment, or Touchpoint that spawned it. So "why is this action open?" is always answerable.
Touchpoint-first read
The SAGE app now lets teams read the log by touchpoint first: open a meeting, expand it, and see the Problems, Alignments, and Actions attached to that discussion. The model still keeps Problems as durable threads, but the everyday query starts where teams usually do: what happened at this meeting?
TAP vs RAID
RAID organizes work into four parallel lists (Risks, Actions, Issues, Decisions) that share no obvious structure. TAP organizes work around a problem thread — so the four RAID concepts are still present, but they're connected. A problem thread might contain three alignments, five linked actions, two decisions, and twelve touchpoints — all searchable and traversable from the root.
If you're already running a RAID log and it works for you, the TAP approach mainly buys you better traceability over the history of a program. If you've ever had to reconstruct "why did we do that?" a year after it happened, you'll appreciate the difference.
When the TAP Log runs
The TAP Log is live for the entire program lifecycle — from the first Problem captured in Situation through the hypercare defect triage in Embed. It's the single place where the program's running reality is tracked.