Tell me What you Want, What you Really, Really Want: How to Identify the Real Business Question
Locally Optimistic
Open the docsFirst independent analysis · Advanced beginner · Lesson 26 of 99 · about 2 hours
Turning a spec into an analysis plan
After this you can convert a written brief into a sequenced plan listing the tables, joins, checks and outputs for each question, before writing any SQL.
Why it matters
Read the spec twice. For each question, write which tables and columns you need, the grain of the answer, what a plausible answer looks like, and what would make it untrustworthy. Draw the join path between tables and note which joins are one-to-many. The value is noticing early that a question is ambiguous or unanswerable with the data, rather than six hours in.
How to use this resource
A practitioner template for pinning down the real question and the decision behind it. Apply its questions to each item in the spec.