War-game a co-marketing budget by testing whether spend capacity, review gates, and freeze deadlines still shrink soft allocations when several partner surfaces share one fund and the next pipeline chart is close.
Co-marketing budgets fail when "approved" means a checkbox without a decision artifact, when teams dual-count a draft as both reviewed and live, and when money-adjacent partner paths still pin to one thin pool because the map is incomplete. The review needs one written inventory of spend classes, one owner who can deny a risky shared request, and a documented consequence when a failed review ages past the deadline.
Assemble the budget packet
List spend classes by surface, weekly volume, review gate, last budget-skip reason, owner of record, and evidence required to keep the rule. Attach open findings, overdue drafts, and any emergency co-spend waiver in the last quarter. Name which classes are out of scope and why. If a compliance-adjacent partner class is omitted, show the residual risk in the same packet.
Decide allow, revise, or hold in advance. Include the fields that compute overdue-review status so two reviewers reach the same label from the same exports.
Claim matrix
| Claim | Evidence required | Fail condition |
|---|---|---|
| Class is staffed | Named reviewer roster and measured time-to-budget check | Roster is empty or still points to a single untested operator |
| Spend is complete | Fund export showing approved state for the claimed fields | Ticket closed while export still shows open |
| Priority is unique | Sample partners proving no double-booked pool | Priority invents uniqueness the pool never enforced |
| Override is controlled | Logged use with time-bound restore of review | Shared override or unlogged use |
Walk four cases in Pingpong: a surface still pinned to one overloaded pool, a spend that left a partner path live without partnerships review, a class that mixed batch and interactive campaigns, and a request to skip a compliance partner because volume is rare. Start from the documented budget language. Ask who can extend a freeze window and which export proves review. Any step that depends on an unnamed person becomes a budget condition.
Replay one prior overspend incident under the proposed rules. If the incident would still age without a reverse owner, revise the rules before calling the budget ready.
Pair with the partnerships ops lead seat, an affiliate disclosure policy stress test, and a co-marketing fund review. More operating decisions live in the war-game decisions hub.
Close only when approved and blocked labels can be reproduced from stored exports without a verbal override.