Connect first, model later

The order everyone inherits

Consolidate the systems, agree what every field means, build the reports, then let people ask. Each step is sensible. Together they put months between a program starting and its first useful answer, and the definitional debate happens in the abstract, before anyone knows which definitions people will actually reach for.

What reversing it looks like

• Connecting produces a map automaticallyReading a system tells you what it holds and how those things relate. That part does not require a person, and it is most of what a first question needs.
• Questions start immediatelyStart with the ordinary questions that currently wait in a queue, which are the majority by volume, rather than the board numbers.
• The definitional work becomes evidence-ledYou find out which twenty definitions people actually rely on, rather than modeling four hundred and discovering later which ones mattered.
• Approval stays humanA definition becomes authoritative when someone accountable says so. Automatic promotion is how a plausible but wrong metric quietly becomes the number a quarter closes on.

What this does not replace

It does not replace the warehouse. Deep history, heavy transformation and the reporting a regulator sees are exactly what that investment is for, and a query-in-place approach is not a substitute.

It does not replace your modeling discipline either. If definitions live in version control and get reviewed like code, keep that. It is an asset, and the argument here is only about what has to finish before the first question can be asked.