What is the Customer Checklist?
The Customer Checklist captures what the person relying on your analysis actually needs before you start researching. It asks who the principal customer is, what question they need answered, whether that's the question they asked or the one they should have asked, what decision the analysis will support, who else has a stake, and what format and deadline they expect. It appears alongside the Getting Started Checklist in Heuer and Pherson's Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis.
When to use it
Use it at project kickoff, ideally during or right after your first conversation with the customer, and before you commit research time. The most expensive mistake in analysis is a well-researched answer to the wrong question. Return to the checklist whenever you learn something that changes what the customer needs. For example, you might find their real concern is contract renewal risk rather than vendor performance in general.
How to use this tool
- Name the checklist after the project it supports.
- Work through the starter questions, answering what you know from the tasking or intake conversation.
- Mark what you can't answer yet as Needs Follow-Up. That turns a silent gap into an open item to raise with the customer. The status runs from Not Started to Needs Follow-Up to Answered.
- Add questions specific to your project, and remove the ones that don't apply.
- Update answers as you learn more. Each change is timestamped, so you can see when your understanding of the customer shifted.
- Export the checklist to confirm the scope with your customer in writing.
How to scope around the customer
- Ask what decision the analysis supports. It shapes depth, format and deadline more than the topic does.
- Look for competing stakeholders, whose interest in the answer may differ from your customer's.
- Agree on format and timeline early. A two-page memo due Friday and a full assessment due next month are different projects.
Related
- Getting Started Checklist scopes the rest of the project around the customer's need.
- Stakeholder Map maps the secondary stakeholders the checklist uncovers.
- Problem Statement states the customer's need in one sentence.
- Empathy Map builds a deeper understanding of a key customer.