Most analytics engagements that underdeliver do not fail at the build. They fail at the brief. Requirements are assembled from what stakeholders ask for rather than the decisions they need to make - and the result is technically correct output that does not change anything.
This playbook describes how Hopton runs discovery before any build begins: eight plain business questions that turn a list of report requests into a prioritised, agreed plan - with scope and success criteria defined before a line of code is written.
Discovery is not a workshop. It is eight questions with honest answers.
Eight questions that replace a requirements document
Requirements documents describe what to build. Good discovery surfaces the decisions the output needs to serve, who acts on it, what changes if the recommendation is followed, and what good looks like when it is done. Those are different questions and they produce a different brief.
From discovery to a prioritised plan
The output of a Hopton discovery is not a list of features. It is a ranked plan: the outputs that deliver the most decision value first, the ones that can wait, and a clear picture of what success looks like at the end of the engagement.
What the playbook covers
- The eight discovery questions Hopton uses before any analytics build
- How to turn stakeholder requests into a brief based on decisions, not features
- What a well-run discovery produces - and how it changes what gets built
- How the same framework applies to reports, Fabric models, and AI agents
- How to define scope and success criteria before the engagement begins
Who this is for
Data leads, project sponsors, and analytics teams who want to understand how Hopton approaches the front end of an engagement - and the questions worth asking before any analytics project begins.