The Backlog

What this pack runs.

An order book, a pipeline, a remaining performance obligation, a total of signed reservations: all of it is reported gross, and a gross figure cannot say when it arrives or whether it will. It gets quoted as years of revenue anyway, put in the deck as evidence of safety, and used to justify a plan it may not cover. Three figures would make a backlog comparable to revenue, and almost no company reports them together — not because anybody is hiding them, but because each sits with a different owner: the conversion history with finance, the schedule in the contracts, the margin in the pricing of deals signed years ago. This pack turns them into arithmetic. The reported total at the share that has actually converted gives the honest backlog. Divided by the schedule, or by what the company can physically deliver in a year, whichever is slower, it gives the annual draw — and the delivery limit is usually what binds, which is the finding most companies have not made. That draw set against next year's plan gives the share the backlog covers, and the remainder is revenue that has to be won and is not sold yet. It stops on five conditions: no backlog figure, no historical conversion share, no schedule, nothing stated about what the company can deliver in a year, and no margin.

The casebooks these cases come from.

The pack reads nine sourced decisions through the framework. They are drawn from these casebooks, each one a set of verified records on a single decision type.

A verified record has passed a mechanical claim-versus-source check, a second model's read, and human approval. The count is what exists today, not a target.