OBJECTIVE: Check whether a fictional report preserves the difference between complete and partial evidence. Use paper records or an authorized isolated test environment with synthetic counts. Do not interrupt live reporting services or use real participant records.
1. Define Three Contributors
Create desks A, B and C, all expected to report for the same invented interval. Give A a count of four and B an explicit count of zero. Give C no usable response.
For this exercise, the correct display is a received subtotal of four, coverage of two out of three desks, and an unknown whole-system total. These are test assumptions, not a universal reporting policy.
2. Inspect the Missing State
Compare the operator screen, exported summary and reader-facing label. Each should distinguish B’s reported zero from C’s missing response. A successful refresh of A and B must not make the report complete.
Add an old report of two from C for a previous interval. Keep it available as history, but do not let it silently turn the current subtotal into six. Check both the numbers and their period labels.
3. Recover Without Duplication
Provide a current report of three from C. With all three desks reporting for the same interval, the fixture now supports a complete total of seven.
Repeat the exercise with a manual observation covering those same three cases. Require the reviewer to explain how overlap is handled before combining records. A missing response returning should not cause the same cases to count twice.
4. Change the Inventory Explicitly
Model a legitimate closure of desk C effective in the next interval. Record the authorized scope change rather than dropping C merely because it failed to respond. The earlier interval should retain its original expected scope.
Completion criterion: missing, zero, stale and current contributions remain distinct; coverage follows the declared inventory; and recovery supports a reconciled total. An unresolved gap has a named review owner instead of an invented number.
Read Coverage Before Confidence and the fictional Missing Platform for context.