The M-CaReM-AI Method: Defining Work for AI / Unit 1 MCM 022 review, 2 to 3 minutes
One Requirement, Two Readings
The idea
A worked example, constructed for this course, shows how hidden domain fracture turns one agreed requirement into two different systems.
In practice
The library's committee approves a requirement: members shall be able to renew a loan twice. Everyone signs it. The circulation team builds the renewal button to extend the due date on the existing loan, and to stop after two extensions. The reporting team, which counts a renewal as a new loan, builds the limit as a count of linked loans per item. For a month both look right. Then a member renews a laptop twice. The circulation system allows a third renewal, because it had reset the count when the laptop was checked in and out again at the desk. Reporting shows three loans and flags the member for breaking the rule. The member receives an overdue notice for a loan the desk says does not exist. The requirement was clear, testable and approved. It still meant two things, because the word loan meant two things. The fix was not a better sentence. It was a definition: a Loan is one period of borrowing that begins at checkout and ends at return, and a renewal changes its due date without creating a new Loan.
Where people slip
The sentence passed every familiar criterion and still failed, because the criteria judge wording and the disagreement was about the thing. No amount of rewording would have caught it; only asking which thing the requirement was about, and what that thing is made of, would have. That is the material problem the rest of the course addresses, one phase at a time, starting with the four causes in unit two.
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