Reading a stack before you touch it
A field method for first-week analysis when documentation is thin and opinions are loud.
Most failed rewrites start with confidence and unfinished maps. In our Systems Readiness Studio we ask cohorts to spend the first morning listing what they can prove, what they only suspect, and what nobody has checked in months.
Begin with runtime truth: which services answer production traffic, which jobs actually run, and which dashboards people open when something breaks. Marketing diagrams come later.
Interview in pairs. One person asks, the other captures contradictions. When two owners give different names for the same queue, that conflict becomes a labeled risk—not a joke in the hallway.
End the week with a readiness brief that leadership can refuse or fund. If the brief cannot support a decision, the analysis is not finished.