# Map the terrain first

Field notes / 01

An enterprise never hands you a blank page. There is an ERP that everything else bows to, several teams that each believe they own the customer record, and a way of deciding that nobody has written down. The first weeks are for drawing that map. The architecture comes after.

## What I learned the hard way

1. **Draw the systems before you design anything.** List every system that touches a product, a price, a customer or an order, and who owns it. The integration you did not know about is the one that breaks the launch.
2. **Find who decides, who pays and who can block.** They are rarely the same person. The organisation chart tells you who signs. A few conversations tell you whose doubts can stop a project.
3. **Meet your technical peers in the first week.** The ERP lead, the security officer and the network team can save you months or cost you months. Ask them what went wrong last time. They will tell you.
4. **Ask how things really work, then go and look.** A documented process describes the intention. Sit with the person who does the job and watch one order go through from start to finish.
5. **Put the map on one page and show it.** Boxes, owners and open questions. People correct a drawing far faster than they answer an email.
6. **Mark the unknowns as unknowns.** A question mark on the map is honest and useful. A guess drawn as a fact turns into a wrong estimate three months later.

Diagram: A one-page map. The ERP sits in the middle, with the store, the CRM, product data, the warehouse, payments and a legacy tool around it, each with its owner. Two of them are drawn dashed, as open questions.

## Tips and tricks

- Book the introductions before the kickoff, not after it.
- Ask every system owner the same three questions: what feeds you, what do you feed, and what breaks.
- Keep a list of names with what each person cares about.
- Put a date on the map. It will be out of date in a month, and that is fine.
- Share it early and unfinished.

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