Draw the flow, pick what breaks

By the end of this step you'll have a picture of how data moves through Ridgeline, and three honest bets on where it will break first.

1. Draw the data flow

A table tells you what exists. A drawing tells you how it connects, and that's where most problems travel.

1. A box for each system. Use paper and take a photo, or a free drawing tool like excalidraw.com (no account needed).
2. An arrow for each connection, pointing the way the data goes. The store sends orders to the warehouse, so the arrow goes from the store to the warehouse.
3. Label every arrow with what moves along it: "orders", "tickets", "returns events", "ad spend".
4. Mark the unknowns. A dashed arrow or a question mark where you're not sure.

2. Pick three places that will break first

Look at your map and drawing, and pick the three places most likely to fail. For each, one sentence on why. Good reasons sound like:

• "Lots of things depend on it, and nobody checks it."
• "One person does it by hand."
• "It's not connected to anything, so problems there stay invisible."

Bad reasons sound like a feeling: "it seems old".

Notice which layer each pick is in. If all three are about screens, look again: most things break in the layers underneath.

Hand in

• Your systems map (the spreadsheet)
• Your data-flow drawing
• Your three "will break first" picks, each with a reason

Go through the self-check on the right, tick I've submitted, and the answer key opens below.