Turn what you saw into scoped product decisions

Turn each relevant observation into a decision the design and delivery team can test, and keep the original observation next to it. A requirement like "provide a unified dashboard" is hard to argue with because it doesn't say much. "Show coordinators requests waiting for assignment, with received time and priority reason" can be checked against the queue problem that led to it.

For each proposed capability, I'd write down:

• the work problem or decision it supports
• the roles that use it
• the states and information involved
• where that information comes from
• the action it allows
• the evidence the action has to leave behind
• known exceptions
• dependencies on another system or team

Group capabilities around pieces of work rather than the old modules. A request might need intake, validation, assignment, approval, fulfilment and closure. Grouping it that way helps the team release a path that works end to end, instead of rebuilding separate screens that can't finish a job on their own.

Draw a line around the first release by choosing which request types and branches it'll support. Say plainly which cases are excluded and how they'll keep running in the meantime. If you exclude something without an interim process, staff will fill the gap themselves. The temporary path can be manual, but it should have an owner and a point where it ends.

When you prioritise, think about how often something happens, what goes wrong if it fails and how well you understand it, without pretending you can always boil that down to a precise score. A frequent, low-risk task can be a good early candidate because the team gets repeated feedback from it. A rare task with regulatory or financial consequences might still need early design because it shapes permissions and history. A dependency nobody understands well might need investigating before either.

Trace every interface and integration back to the work. If the new product sends a record somewhere else, work out when it sends, which version it sends, how the acknowledgement gets stored and what happens if it's rejected. "Integrate with finance" is a project heading. It doesn't tell anyone what to build.

Finish the scope with acceptance conditions you can actually observe. A coordinator can see unassigned requests. An approver can see which evidence was used. A corrected record keeps its previous value. A failed transfer shows up in a queue with a retry rule. Those are specific enough to guide design without dictating every visual detail.