Joacim Brandell Author White paper Public review 2026
Framework · White paper

PDCA+v2.0

A structural framework for how management-system disciplines align through a shared conjunction.

The proposition
§ Abstract

Every management-system standard an organisation runs describes its own Plan–Do–Check–Act cycle. Each is internally coherent. None of them specifies how its cycle relates to the others.

In practice, this means several siloed cycles, with the alignment between them reconstructed by hand — typically by a GRC team holding the whole picture in their heads. The cost is real and recurring: duplicated work, gaps at the seams between management systems, and a learning loop that closes within each silo but not across them.

The organisational lifecycle is not a structure that exists prior to its management systems and that they each apply. It is the structure that emerges when management-system disciplines align well with each other through a shared substrate.

Read & review

— 02 primary documents
Supporting material

The compass

— 04 bearings · 20 pieces · 01 companion
§ How to read

The whitepaper is the framework. The four bearings — strategic, cybernetics, technical, regimes — are how the framework becomes legible from different starting points. None is preferred; each enters the same territory from a different direction.

The companion at centre points outward. The bearings stand on their own. Start where your work begins.

Companion · The connector

Your destination
starts here

The pathfinder. The compass itself, made legible — how the four bearings connect, which one to start with, and how the supporting material relates to the framework.

Open the companion
North Bearing · N

Strategic & business

Written for senior management, boards, audit and risk committees, strategy leadership, and those who prepare board materials.

08 pieces
East Bearing · E

Cybernetics

Written for cyberneticists, systems thinkers, organisational theorists, and practitioners interested in the framework's intellectual provenance.

04 pieces
South Bearing · S

Technical operationalisation

Written for technical architects, GRC technology leads, enterprise architects, technically-oriented CISOs, and developers building substrate-based systems.

04 pieces
West Bearing · W

Regime application

Written for risk and compliance professionals, GRC managers, regulatory affairs leaders, and supply-chain compliance practitioners.

04 pieces
§ Note

Each leg is complete on its own terms. A reader who engages with one bearing substantively will understand the framework from that direction without needing the others. A reader who engages with all four will see the framework from four directions simultaneously — which produces a deeper understanding than any single bearing can offer.

§ The author

Joacim Brandell

The PDCA+ framework grew out of a practical question: why does a configuration drift caught at three in the morning not reach the risk register without someone manually carrying it there? The white paper is an answer in the form of a structural description; the four bearings extend that answer in the directions practice asks for it.

This is currently a public-review release. Comments, disagreements, and adoption stories are all welcome.

§ Standards in scope
ISO 31000Risk management
NIST SP 800-128Security-focused configuration management
ISO/IEC 27035Information-security incident management
ITIL 4Event management & change enablement
ISO/IEC 27001Information-security management
NIST RMF / 800-53Control selection & assessment
ISO/IEC 27004Measurement constructs
Annex SL / Annex LHigh-level structure