suede-ops-assessment

Start by mapping how work actually happens rather than listing automation ideas. Interview the people who perform each process, inventory every silo including spreadsheets and inboxes, quantify each bottleneck in annual cost, then rank opportunities by value divided by build complexity.

Run a walkthrough rather than a survey: ask the performer to describe the process step by step until it ends, then ask what they retype, where work waits, and what breaks if volume doubles. Follow up two days later, when recall of exceptions and forgotten steps is reliably better.

The leadership map describes how the business is meant to run; the floor map describes how work actually gets done, including workarounds and unofficial spreadsheets. Systems designed from the leadership map get routed around, so the performer's account is recorded as the floor map.

It ranks opportunities by annual value against a counted complexity score and reports do-first, later, and low-return groups, but it stops there by design. Deciding what to build and in what order is routed to the separate suede-ops-architecture skill.

A shadow spreadsheet is diagnostic, not disobedience: it means either training missed that person or the system genuinely does not handle their case. Measure Adoption Rate from system logs, and check whether the original assessment was rushed or leadership-only before blaming the build.

Do not use it for external customer discovery, lead scoring and CRM routing, product analytics dashboards, or user onboarding; those belong to dedicated skills. It also does not decide build order once the map exists.