Pick one real thing that happened to a customer last week. A purchase, a complaint, an assistant that asked about you, a retailer's invoice. Walk it down the layers and fill in four things at each step. The place it stalls is the part of your stack to look at first. If one platform or one owner covers several layers, write it once and keep going.
Back to the architectureFill in the four columns for each layer. Leave a row blank if the event genuinely does not touch that layer. If you cannot fill in a row that should apply, that is the finding.
| Layer | System owner | Data source | Control point | Fails first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A · Experiencewhere the customer met you | ||||
| B · Decisioning and orchestrationwhat the system chose and how it was sequenced | ||||
| C · Business and brand contextthe definitions and rules the system used | ||||
| D · Intelligencehow the system identified it and what evidence it used | ||||
| E · Data and operational foundationwhat carried the signal and how fast | ||||
| Governance and operationswhat governed permission, access, decisions, measurement, and logging |
What each column is asking
System owner. Who owns this layer in your org, by name or by team.
Data source. Which system, data, or signal feeds it.
Control point. Where the decision can be reviewed, changed, or stopped.
Fails first. What breaks if this connection is missing.
Do not try to rate every box. Pick a single event and trace it all the way down.