Scope analysis (I)

Lord Todd finished his sigh and his eyes returned to me. "Do you ever actually plan to do any work?" He asked in a mild tone.
Truth be told, I was getting a tad irritated with him. Yes, he was a Rock God and yes I was a fan and yes he was my paymaster but - good grief! - I wasn't telling him how to be a legend and yet he felt fine about telling me how to start my job. It does happen a lot in my line of work though - everyone thinks they know how to do it and to be fair it is not exactly rocket science what I do. It's just analysis. The trouble is, most people most of the time would say they do analyse things and yet analysis seems to be the one thing that most people loath and detest and will do just about anything they can to avoid actually doing. Analysis means decomposing a subject to it's fundamental components and defining the relationship between those components. Analysis is on the other hand an attitude of trusting, no-one, believing nothing and proving everything. It means getting rid of personal involvement, of opinions, prejudices, preconceptions and assumptions while recognising the actual constraints that must be worked within or around, and dependencies that must be managed.
I decided it was my turn to sigh and raise my eyes.
"Perhaps you would prefer me just to go off and spend your money without me confirming with you what you are trying to achieve, what the money will be spent on and an idea of when I'll be back?"
"No, I - "
"And believe me it is already hard work just getting a clear idea of what exactly I am meant to be doing." I said it with a smile but every joke has a kernal of truth and he knew that.
"Fire away, what do you need to know?"
There's a framework I use when defining the scope of any case. I use as little or as much of it as I need and I extend it when it doesn't cover all the angles. The framework for defining scope starts with listing the processes that are in scope of the case - that will need to be done.
"So let's see - if I am going to meet your objectives of understanding the who, how, where and why of the attack I am going to need to establish exactly what happened that night, build up the precise chronology of events, document the history of what happened. Then I will need to investigate who might be have been involved and why. Finally, I will need to report to you on what steps you need to take to make sure nothing like it can happen again."
"So far so obvious."
Then the scope moves on to listing the people and organisations I would need to engage during the processes. "Ok, so to establish the history of what happened I will need to work with everyone in this house, including you, and the police. To get at the who and why and I am going to need to work with everyone in the house, the police and Mr Court's friends and relatives." Lord Todd looked uncomfortable with that. "Problem?" I asked.
"Just that I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible that I am stepping up security."
"Hm. What's more important - keeping it quiet or plugging any holes in your security through establishing what happended to Mr Court?"
I often have to bounce around like this between drivers, objectives and scope, especially at the start of a case, as people just don't seem to work in very rational ways...it's a feature of the job and I just live with it.
"Well sorting out the security obviously."
"Then obviously I have to work with his friends and relatives. Agreed?"
He sighed. "Agreed."
But he had pointed out that he wanted it keeping quiet. I couldn't just ignore that. I suggested a principle that I would try and keep to: "I'll be as discrete as I can but if I need to know something then that will take priority. Agreed?"
He nodded. Ok, no change to objectives, but here was a principle I would have to adhere to as far as possible without compromising achiveing the objectives: keep it all as quiet as possible.
And so we went on to consider the rest of the scope.