Master document register (MDR)

The MDR is the documentation set's table of contents, written before the book: at project start the deliverables are enumerated, numbered and scheduled, and thereafter the register tracks each one's current revision, status and dates, planned against actual. Document control maintains it; engineering management runs on it, because deliverable counts and status-weighted progress against the MDR are the standard measure of how engineering is actually doing.

Its quiet governing rule is that the register defines existence: a deliverable not on the MDR is not planned, not scheduled, not progressed and not missed — until it is suddenly needed. Scope discovered late usually turns out to have been absent from the register all along.

As a progress instrument it invites gaming, and gets it: documents issued prematurely to move status counts, revisions cycling without converging, the register reporting ninety percent while the site waits for the ten percent that matters. An MDR measures document status faithfully; whether document status measures engineering is a question the register cannot answer about itself.