The request always comes before the proof.

1. 01

   The ERP is coming.

   The integrator asked for current-state documentation. There isn’t any, so you’ll pay their hourly rate while they interview your own people about your own company.

2. 02

   Ray retires in eighteen months.

   Thirty-one years of how this place actually runs, and none of it is written down.

3. 03

   The request queue never stops.

   Another config change, another tool, another “the system should just.” No process behind any of them — so the loudest ask wins.

4. 04

   The audit found it first.

   Procedures last touched in 2019, describing a process nobody follows anymore.

Different doors. Same missing thing: nobody’s job is to write down how the work works. So it never happens — until it’s expensive.

APQC and Process Classification Framework are trademarks of APQC. The cross-industry PCF is included for classification reference only; Datum is not affiliated with or endorsed by APQC.

Classic SIPOC stops at customers. Constraints and measures are a labelled extension — a map with no limits and no numbers tells you what happens, never whether it is going well.

• ■Mapped
• ■Unexplored
• ■Collision
• ■Unclassified
• ■Stale

The same data draws the handoff map. Each sheet's outputs are chained to the next sheet's inputs, so a break shows up as what it is: an input nobody produces, or an output nobody receives.

A well-documented bad process is not a good process, and the tool never merges the two numbers to pretend otherwise. When a constraint is worth fixing — or the room agrees something is missing — one click turns it into a tracked need with the evidence attached: which process, which row, which session, who said so. The improvement list builds itself from documented work instead of from whoever asked loudest. The next time someone brings a request, the answer is simple: show me the sheet.

What the facilitator accepts lands on the sheet as evidence, gaps, and disputes — each carrying who said it and in which session. The workshop doesn’t produce a flipchart photo; it produces the document.

• ■Private until reveal
• ■No accounts
• ■Votes counted
• ■Provenance kept

Datum is currently in a design-partner program: every workspace is free while we build alongside our first customers, and no card is collected anywhere. Flat per-workspace pricing comes later — and unlimited viewers will stay free when it does.

“We tried this two years ago. It died.”

It died because it started from a blank page and had no visible finish line. This starts from a standard that already names the processes, and the coverage screen shows exactly how far you have gotten, what two sheets are fighting over, and what has gone stale. A finish line you can see is the difference.

“The last consultant charged us six figures and left binders.”

Consultants leave. The binders go stale the day they’re printed. Datum keeps the method on the page instead of in someone’s head — the same interview a good consultant runs is the form your own people fill in. You just stopped renting it.

“Nobody will fill this in.”

Not alone, no. Share a role-scoped invite link and the people who own the work document the work — or skip the desk entirely and run it as a workshop: the room joins by QR from their phones, answers privately, and the sheet gets filled in by the people who actually run the process, in one sitting.

“Who has to maintain this?”

Sheets flag themselves when they pass the review window you set. The one real job — keeping the shared terms clean when two people name the same thing differently — takes about an hour a month, and the reconcile queue lines the decisions up for you.