Worked example · entirely fictional
A dashboard.
A different
question.
Harbor Supply wants sales visibility. Discovery reveals what the business actually needs to decide.
The request
A commercial director wants to prioritize accounts each Monday. The CRM records signed deals. Accounting records invoices. A spreadsheet maps accounts manually.
The decision behind it
Which accounts have falling invoiced sales and no active renewal conversation? Signed pipeline and invoiced revenue remain separate measures.
The evidence changes the scope
A redacted invoice extract and CRM sample exist. API permissions are unverified. The account mapping contains unresolved duplicates. Finance has not approved the net revenue definition.
Investigate before committing.
Resolve matching rules and authorization through bounded discovery. Do not turn unknown access and conflicting metrics into an implementation promise.
A bounded first phase
Two approved exports. One account-level view. Two metrics: net invoiced sales and open renewal pipeline. Exclude real-time streaming, forecasting and historic cleanup beyond the agreed sample.
Illustrative discovery effort
| Activity | Low | Likely | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interviews and definitions | 4 | 6 | 10 |
| Access and profiling | 6 | 10 | 18 |
| Mapping design | 4 | 8 | 16 |
| Findings and readout | 4 | 6 | 10 |
| Total hours | 18 | 30 | 54 |
Discovery only, no contingency added. Assumes two available decision owners, approved exports, no custom connector and one review round. Illustrative effort, not a quotation, timeline or benchmark.
What needs approval?
The sponsor accepts the scope, finance agrees metric definitions, data owners confirm permitted fields and access, and mapping exceptions are documented. Only then is a bounded implementation proposal considered.
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