A process practice that built its own instrument.

Every engagement starts by drawing the operation as it actually runs, from the documents and the people who do the work. Then the few numbers that describe it are found and, where they can be, measured. Documents, systems and people disagree; the disagreements are logged, not silently fixed. And every analysis ends in a decision — one of nine verbs — with its reason written in a sentence a person can repeat in a meeting.

Ipso is that discipline made testable: a package of a few true numbers, each with the grade it earned, every figure derived when it is looked at and never stored, every view printing its own balance check. It exists because the practice kept needing it. Ipso and its method are Cherrystone Business Services intellectual property.