A retail bank's VP of operations asks you for 'an agent that handles card disputes end to end' and wants a demo in three weeks. Disputes are regulated, involve customer financial data, and today pass through three teams. What should you do first?

Answer: C — Establish the baseline, outcome metric, data access, regulatory limits and risk tolerance with each team

(c) is right: structured discovery comes first: what the outcome is and how it's measured today, what data is accessible under what controls, which regulations apply, and how much error each team can tolerate. (a) and (b) commit to technology before requirements exist, anchoring the project on assumptions. (d) is untestable and can't be traded off.