How many employees do we have? Yerodin has been asking for three weeks. He does get answers, just a different number every time, and not one of them comes with a reason why that one should be the right one. Nothing is missing in the systems, not a row and not a status, and something is missing all the same — it simply never got written down, because nobody ever decided it.
How many vehicles does Sales actually use? That is the kind of question you assume is already answered before you ask it. The table shows which person belongs to which vehicle, and it is well maintained — no gaps, nothing null. What it does not tell you is whether that person was assigned the car or actually drove it, and the answer turns on exactly that.
In most projects the first table exists before the first definition. That is understandable — you can show a table, while a definition first has to be agreed on. And that agreement decides whether you end up with answers or with numbers three departments argue about.
"Michael, I have a simple question." Silvia Seven, CFO of FastChangeCo, pushes the project status deck aside. "How many projects have redefined what a 'customer' is from scratch in the last two years?" Michael Mueller swallows. He knows the answer. And it's uncomfortable.
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