Within a single Business Flow, multiple Decisions may occur sequentially. DSE does not merely record each Decision individually. By preserving the relationships among preceding and subsequent Content and Decisions, it makes the chain of Decisions traceable.

In the example shown, the Decision that generates a Meeting Summary from Meeting Minutes is recorded as DSE-001. Next, Meeting Summary, Internal Sales Data, and External Market Data are used in a Compare / Evaluate Decision, which is recorded as DSE-002 and produces a Market Analysis. A subsequent Decision that generates the Final Presentation from the Market Analysis is recorded as DSE-003.

Importantly, each DSE preserves more than the Decision outcome itself. For example, DSE-002 preserves Input Content, Fact, Evaluation, Policy, Authority, Process Record, Model / Context, and other relevant elements as Evidence of the state associated with that Decision at the time it was made.

This makes it possible to establish that Meeting Summary, Internal Sales Data, and External Market Data were used as Input; that Compare / Evaluate was performed under the Evaluation of Market benchmark, the Analysis policy, and the Authority of Analysis scope; and that the Decision “Performance below benchmark” was formed, producing Market Analysis as the Output.

The Output of one Decision can then become the Input to the next Decision.

By connecting DSEs through these relationships, it becomes possible to reconstruct across the entire Business Flow which information passed through which Decisions and how it subsequently became connected to further information and Decisions, rather than examining only the final artifact.

DSE is therefore both an Evidence Record for an individual Decision and a building block of Decision Provenance when multiple DSEs are connected across a sequence of Decisions.