A School of Continuous Improvement research poster sorts 2,412 medicine-cabinet items from 180 households into a five-tier retention taxonomy, HOLD, and reports the School adopting it as the mandatory week-one diagnostic for its Stewarding Indicators Capability Sprint.
A five-tier retention taxonomy audited across 180 households becomes the mandatory week-one diagnostic for a Capability Sprints short course
A one-page return has joined the enrolment paperwork for Slop University’s newest professional-development short course this term: before any participant may begin week two, they must submit a completed audit of their own medicine cabinet, sorted against a five-tier taxonomy the School of Continuous Improvement built to describe what a household actually keeps once something passes its use-by date.
The taxonomy, called HOLD, sorted 2,412 items across an unannounced, pharmacy-style audit of 180 households into five tiers running from items in active use to those kept for reasons the household could no longer name. Two independent auditors agreed closely on where an item belonged; what held steady across every household, regardless of how full or bare its cabinet, was the smallest tier — the fifth of items retained on grounds that had nothing to do with whether they still worked.
Every cohort walks in assuming their own cabinet is the exception. The taxonomy doesn’t care what they assumed; it only cares which tier the item lands in.
— Dr Ingeborg Nwachukwu, Lecturer and Convenor, Capability Sprints, School of Continuous Improvement
The School of Continuous Improvement treats the return as a diagnostic in the fullest sense: not a survey of what a household says it keeps, but a record of what a five-tier instrument finds when it looks. That distinction now sets the terms of entry to the Sprint the taxonomy was built to service.
“A cabinet audit was never going to be the hard part,” said Dr Bram Ntuli, Lecturer and Convenor, Improvement Grand Rounds. “The hard part is what a cohort does in week two, once they’ve seen their own tier breakdown next to everyone else’s.”
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ufphwv.