Practice — Hot · The Regional Briefing

Scenario

The quarterly regional briefing lands on you. Two questions from leadership:

Q1. "Which region has a returns problem? Ops wants to know where to send the quality team."

Q2. "We're opening two stores next year. The map should tell us where — which states are underserved?"

Requirements

1. Answer Q1 with the heat grid — and answer it honestly, whatever the grid says. If the quality team has nowhere to go, that sentence is the deliverable.
2. Take Q2 seriously and carefully. Build the map and state bars. Then write down what "underserved" would require knowing, and check which of those things this dataset contains. Your briefing must separate what the data shows (where we are strong/weak among current states) from what it cannot show (where demand exists that we haven't met — population, competitors, the 27 states with no stores and no data at all).
3. The Online complication. 44.7% of revenue is online — including sales into states with no stores. Does the sales data let you see online demand by state? Check the model (where does a customer's state live, and does an online order know it?). Report what you find — this is a genuine schema investigation, not a trick.
4. Write the briefing: five or six sentences answering Q1 plainly, answering Q2's answerable half, and naming precisely what data would be needed for the rest.

Reflection

• Q2 looked like a mapping question and turned out to be a data-inventory question. What tipped it?
• Rank the three deliverables (a heat grid saying "no problem," a map of current strength, a list of missing data) by their value to the executives. Defend the ranking.