SE Intake Question Guide

What's eating your time right now?

Goal: Identify the core pain point. Listen for frustration, repetitive tasks, or blockers.

Walk me through what you do today step by step.

Goal: Map the current workflow to identify inefficiencies and establish a baseline.

Do you have any existing spreadsheets or docs for this?

Goal: Gather context artifacts (links/files) that the LLM can process later.

What would good look like for you?

Goal: Define the ideal state and success criteria. Focus on the outcome, not just the feature.

Is this something we can knock out in a conversation, or does it need a build?

Goal: Determine if this is a quick consultation or requires a larger engineering effort.

Which department or team is this for?

Goal: Map to Business Unit (e.g., Sales, Marketing, Engineering) for routing.

Who's the main point of contact?

Goal: Identify the stakeholder if different from the requester.

When do you need this by?

Goal: Establish a timeline (Need By Date).

How much time does this take you right now?

Goal: Quantify the current effort (e.g., hours/week) to measure impact later.

How often do you do this? Daily? Weekly?

Goal: Determine the frequency to understand the compounding effect of the problem.

Is it just you, or does the whole team deal with this?

Goal: Assess the scope of impact—individual productivity vs. team-wide efficiency.

Is this mainly about saving time, or does it unlock something new?

Goal: Distinguish between Efficiency (speed) and Growth (quality/revenue/insight).

If we solved this, what would that free you up to do?

Goal: Capture the qualitative value (e.g., 'focus on strategy') to build a strong business case.