Step 01 of 9 4-6 weeks· advanced
Step 1: Discovery and Source Inventory
Profile every major source system, document quality issues, identify downstream consumers, and capture stakeholder pain points. This is a stakeholder conversation, not just a tech audit.
Recommended prompts
Use one of these to do the work in your IDE
Open the template to read it in full. Click Copy prompt to grab it (with your stack values pre-filled where they apply) — then paste into Claude Code, Cursor, or wherever you build.
Recommended skills
Drop these into Claude Code for this phase
Skills auto-trigger on the right kind of request. Install once; they apply to every prompt that fits.
Recommended MCP configs
Wire these tools into Claude Code first
MCP servers give Claude Code direct access to external systems (Jira, browsers, databases). Configure once.
When you're done
Verify these in your own work before moving on
This is a checklist for you to mentally tick off in your repo and IDE — the site doesn't track it, you do.
- Source-system inventory complete (all systems documented)
- Per-system profiling done (volumes, schemas, data quality)
- Downstream consumer inventory (who uses what, how often)
- Pain points captured with root-cause analysis
- Top 10 risks identified
- Strategic recommendations documented
Common pitfalls
What goes wrong at this step
- Skipping stakeholder interviews — the audit document misses what people actually do with data
- Auditing only formal systems — spreadsheets, MS Access, custom Python scripts all carry data
- Trusting docs over reality — profile actual data; documentation lies
- Underestimating consumer count — reports nobody mentioned but everybody depends on
- Hiding data-quality findings — they're the point of discovery; surface them