As we mentioned, smart contracts are vital to business interaction between the participants of any blockchain network. As they essentially contain the rules and conditions under which a transaction is deemed valid, we need to ensure that every participant and organization agrees to its validity—otherwise, trust will be compromised.

Conditions for promoting a smart contract would include the following:

• Traceability to an issue: Is this a bug-fix or a new feature? Along with this element, there might be a need for organizations to approve the issue before it moves to implementation.
• Successful execution of all tests: This may be self-evident for some, but most tests should be automated and the results captured.

• Code review from key parties: Would you sign a contract without reviewing its terms and condition? Well, the code review serves a similar purpose.
• Impact assessment: Is the new version of the smart contract backwards-compatible? Changes that are not backwards-compatible will require additional planning.
• Sign-off from key parties: Preceding all the other points, do you have the blessing of all relevant parties? Where will you record this?

The definition of key parties will be something that will be left for the consortium to define. Key parties could be all organizations that currently use that smart contract, or perhaps the term could refer to a subset of technical leads or members of the founder organization.

Preceding the conditions for promoting a smart contract, promotion frequency could also be contentious. Some organizations are used to quarterly cycles while others are used to a weekly deployment. Friction is bound to occur if such a factor is not discussed upfront as this will have a direct impact on the operational expense an organization may need to account for to maintain their participation to the expected level of the consortium. It is also to be noted that smart contracts may be scoped to the entire network or the pair or set of participants. The scoping  of these smart contracts and various permutation and combinations represents interesting system modifications needed for promotion. 

The point is that the conditions and process of modifying a smart contract should be defined upfront by the consortium to avoid any misunderstanding and frustration. In a sense, this is no different than a traditional contract being modified; the terms for the conditions of a contract modification need to be agreed upfront to avoid conflicts.