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Client Delivery › Discovery guide

Discovery guide

The discovery instrument for the PLAN phase. Everything below is asked of the client in their language; no internal vocabulary. The discipline: every answer lands as a plane value, an overlay selection, or a promotion candidate. The deliverable of discovery IS the filled binding. Each section has three parts: the interview guide (what we ask), the data and document requests (what we collect), and a note on what we do with it. The chip on each section shows which part of the Client Customization Plane it fills; drop the chips from client-facing copies. Suggested rhythm: sections A to C in the first working session with the deal team, D and E with IT and compliance in parallel, F to J as follow-ups once use cases are chosen.

A. Engagement scope & use cases C2 Solution, use-case activation · orchestration mode

Interview guide

  1. Which workflows consume the most analyst and associate time today, and where do errors or rework happen most?
  2. Which documents does the team produce repeatedly (IC materials, screening summaries, LP reports, board packs)? Roughly how many of each per quarter?
  3. If we could take three things off your team's plate in the first ninety days, which three would prove the most value?
  4. Who owns each of those workflows end-to-end, and who would champion this program internally?
  5. For each workflow: should steps run one-after-another with review between, or in parallel with review at the end?
  6. Are there client-specific sequences we should compose from standard steps, and where exactly do they deviate from your standard lifecycle?

Data and document requests

  • Two or three recent examples of each key document type (redacted is fine)
  • Deal-team org chart with roles
  • A list of active workflows with their owners

What we do with it: Feeds the use-case selection matrix: volume, pain and feasibility scored together, producing the ninety-day pilot shortlist.

B. Ways of working & your language C3 Knowledge, stage & gate name mapping · overlay selection

Interview guide

  1. Walk us through your deal lifecycle from sourcing to exit, in your words. What do you call each stage?
  2. What are your approval points called (IC pre-read, partner review, sign-off)? Who approves at each one?
  3. What does 'done' mean for each major document, who signs off, and what happens after?
  4. Is your strategy closer to buyout, growth, credit, or a mix? Anything unusual about how you run process versus a typical firm?

Data and document requests

  • Any process documentation or playbooks that exist
  • A sample IC calendar and agenda
  • Your approval matrix or delegation-of-authority document

What we do with it: Becomes the stage and gate name mapping in the binding, checked against the ontology for anything their process has that ours lacks.

C. Documents, templates & house style C1 Experience, house templates · output formats · tone

Interview guide

  1. Which templates are sacred, where the format must be matched exactly? Which are flexible?
  2. What formats does the team actually work in for each output (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, PDF)?
  3. What are your conventions for numbering, citations, and sourcing inside documents?
  4. Which currency, date and number conventions and which languages must outputs follow? Do any documents need to render in more than one language?
  5. Show us two or three pieces the team considers its best work, what makes them the standard?

Data and document requests

  • House templates for each document type
  • Brand guidelines
  • Three 'gold standard' example documents the team is proud of (these become the quality bar we test against, subject to the data-rights conversation in section I)

What we do with it: Templates convert to render specifications; the gold-standard set becomes the evaluation baseline every output is scored against.

D. Systems & data sources C5 Integration + C6 Data, source selection · field mappings · sync

Interview guide

  1. Where do deal documents live (VDR provider, SharePoint, Egnyte, network drives)? How are folders organized?
  2. What is your system of record for deals and pipeline (DealCloud, Salesforce, Affinity, spreadsheets)?
  3. What do you use for fund administration and portfolio monitoring? Is there a data warehouse?
  4. Which market-data subscriptions does the team rely on (CapIQ, PitchBook, Preqin)? Do the license terms permit programmatic access?
  5. For each source: how fresh does the data need to be, real-time, daily, weekly?
  6. Which systems are cloud versus on-premises, and who administers each?

Data and document requests

  • A systems inventory with owners and admin contacts
  • Sample exports or schemas from the deal system and fund admin
  • An example VDR folder structure from a recent deal
  • Your market-data license terms (the clauses on automated or API access)

What we do with it: Produces the systems inventory and the field-mapping workbook; each source is scored for connector fit: library, configure, or build-and-promote.

E. Access, security & compliance C7 Environment, identity provider · residency · retention · scopes

Interview guide

  1. What is your identity provider (Entra ID, Okta, Google)? Is single sign-on mandatory for vendor tools?
  2. How should access be sliced, by deal team, by fund, by role? Are there information walls or clean-team situations we must respect?
  3. Where must data physically reside? Any jurisdictions to avoid?
  4. What are your retention and deletion policies for deal materials?
  5. Which regulatory frames matter to you here (SEC marketing rule, GDPR, internal AI policy)?
  6. Do you classify data by sensitivity today? Are there classes that must never reach an external model vendor, or only through private, in-region endpoints?
  7. What does your vendor security review involve, and how long does it usually take?

Data and document requests

  • Your security questionnaire, early, so we can run it in parallel
  • IT and security points of contact
  • Your existing AI usage policy, if one exists
  • Your data classification scheme or sensitivity tiers, if defined
  • Relevant excerpts of the compliance manual on records and communications

What we do with it: Fills the identity, residency, retention and data-sensitivity slots and starts the security review clock, run in parallel so it never blocks the pilot.

F. Human oversight & governance C2/C7, HITL placement · gate approvers · escalation · overrides

Interview guide

  1. Where must a human review no matter what, even at the cost of speed?
  2. Who approves at each gate, and what should happen when they are unavailable (backup, escalation clock)?
  3. For each use case: should the system draft-for-review only, or may some outputs file automatically once trust is earned?
  4. When someone overrides or rejects an output, how should that be recorded and who should see it?

Data and document requests

  • Named approvers and backups for the approval matrix
  • Escalation expectations (how long may an approval wait before it escalates)

What we do with it: Becomes the approval matrix and escalation configuration, and sets which use cases run draft-only versus filing automatically.

G. Where the work happens, channels C1 Experience, channel mix · embedded surfaces · MCP hosts

Interview guide

  1. Where does the team actually live during the day, Outlook, Teams, Excel, the deal system?
  2. Do you already have enterprise Claude, Copilot, or similar? Which AI interfaces are sanctioned by IT?
  3. How should the system reach people proactively, notifications in Teams, email digests, nothing unsolicited?
  4. Any interest in voice or mobile access, or is desktop the reality?

Data and document requests

  • Current collaboration tool stack
  • Enterprise AI licenses already in place

What we do with it: Sets the channel mix and the host allow-list; licensing gaps surface here early instead of at go-live.

H. Budgets, operations & success C4 Intelligence + C7, cost ceilings · latency · alerts · baselines

Interview guide

  1. What monthly run-cost range is acceptable at steady state? Who owns that budget?
  2. Which tasks must feel instant, and which can run overnight?
  3. Should this run in your cloud accounts or ours? Any cloud provider mandates?
  4. Who should receive operational alerts and monthly cost reports?
  5. How will you judge success at ninety days, hours saved, cycle time, quality, adoption? What are those numbers today (for example: how long does an IC memo take now, elapsed and effort)?

Data and document requests

  • Today's baseline metrics for the chosen use cases, essential for the before/after comparison
  • Budget owner contact

What we do with it: Baselines feed the before-and-after comparison at ninety days; budget answers become run-contract defaults.

I. Data rights & shared learning C3 Knowledge, telemetry data-rights clause · benchmark scope

Interview guide

  1. We improve the platform using anonymized, aggregated operational metrics (never deal content, never attributable). Is that acceptable, and with what limits?
  2. Is there anything that may never leave your environment in any form, even aggregated?
  3. Do LP side letters or portfolio company agreements constrain how data about your process may be used?

Data and document requests

  • Your standard NDA and data-processing terms
  • The categories (not the documents) of any side-letter constraints on data handling

What we do with it: Drafted into the data-rights clause; this decides what telemetry may ever reach the shared benchmark shelf.

J. Adoption & rollout Plane RUN phase, plus the engagement plan

Interview guide

  1. Who will use this daily, and who weekly? Who is the internal champion who will pull others along?
  2. How do new tools usually land here: pilot group first, or everyone at once? What worked last time, and what did not?
  3. Where will resistance come from, and what would win those people over?
  4. What training formats actually work for this team: live sessions, short videos, a floor-walker for week one?
  5. How should progress be communicated internally, and by whom?

Data and document requests

  • Pilot user list with roles
  • Training calendar constraints
  • The name of the internal champion and the executive sponsor

What we do with it: Shapes the rollout plan: pilot group, training approach, and the adoption metrics tracked alongside quality.

Output of discovery: the filled binding (every slot valued), the approval matrix, the systems inventory with a credentials path, the golden-exemplar set with agreed data rights, baseline metrics for the ninety-day comparison, and the rollout plan. Anything discovered that does not fit a slot is either a Solution-layer overlay candidate or out of scope; say which, in the record.

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