An early stage of design in a software project is the determination of the five most important threads. One of these threads will be done first. It is essentially a potential throwaway prototype. Software developers will recognize principles of incremental build and rapid prototyping in this story.

She calls a friend and asks him how much he would charge her to go pick up the money and bring it back to her new home in San Francisco. Ralph thinks to himself, It will take me about an hour one-way on 101 if I drive after 7pm. I’ll just ask for gas, a beer and pizza afterwards. Ralph tells Shoko he’ll do it for fifty bucks.

That’s great! she says. Oh, did I tell you the money is in pennies? Ralph is momentarily shocked, he realizes his Honda Civic won’t do the job. He does a series of calculations:

• For $100,000 there will be 200,000 rolls of pennies
• Volume of one roll of pennies is about 2 cubic inches. The volume of 200,000 rolls of pennies is 400,000 cubic inches, or, 230 cubic feet
• One roll of pennies weighs 4.5 ounces. Therefore, for 2,000 rolls, the payload will be 56,250 pounds, or 28 tons.

This job is looking like it’s going to be more trouble than he expected.

Oh, did I tell you about the key? This key is for the front door, but it will be easier if you load from the back door. You may have a little difficulty with the back door, sometimes this key works on it and sometimes it doesn’t. You may want to bring a crowbar with you. Oh, and, you may want to bring something to distract the dogs.

Ralph tells Shoko that he’s really sorry, but he has a bad feeling about this. She had better find someone else.

Shoko calls another friend and asks her how much she would charge to go pick up the money and bring it back. Kuan-Yin has already heard the story from Ralph, but she’s intrigued. What would it take to recover 1% of the money? By Kuan-Yin’s calculations:

• The volume of 1% of 200,000 rolls of pennies is 2.3 cubic feet.
• The weight of 1% of 200,000 rolls of pennies is about 563 pounds.
• A 1/4 ton pickup would handle the job.

The cost estimate of the 1% recovery is as follows:

• Renting the pickup for 1 day is $100.
• Gas for the round trip is $30.
• Kuan-Yin has her own equipment for entering the building, no charge to the customer. Kuan-Yin’s time, normally $1000/day, will be pro bono for this trip because Shoko is an old friend.

The cost of the exploration will be about $130. Expenses aside, Kuan-Yin is beginning to wonder if she's going about this in the right way. What does Shoko really need? Obviously she wants the $100,000, but what is she going to do with 200,000 rolls of pennies.

And what about the dogs? If the money is ill-gotten goods, Kuan-Yin doesn't want any part of it. Kuan-Yin asks Shoko directly and learns that the money was re-payment of a loan from a now-estranged family member who holds a long grudge against her. The loan is paid, but Shoko can't use the money. She never really needed it until now. As for the dogs, the building that the money is stored in is a property of Shoko's. There's a small apartment in the back - the tenant takes in stray dogs.

So, somehow the money needs to be moved to a resource who convert it into a convenient asset, like the cash form it's already in, but in a larger, paper denomination. What is Shoko expecting, sacks of $100 bills that she can stuff in her mattress and sleep on?

Kuan-Yin will have to ask Shoko some more questions.

Kuan-Yin decides she needs to be smarter about solving this problem. What is really feasible? More importantly, what is really needed?

Is it better to retrieve the pennies herself, or outsource the job? From a transportation point of view, it is big enough to require professional services.

Kuan-Yin decides she needs an architect, and contacts Jamie.

Jamie begins asking questions about the use of the money once it has been received. Jamie knows that she can solve the technical problem of retrieving the money, but until she understands the use case she does not know what the end goal is.

Shoko says the money is not useful to her in its current form and its current location. She wants to invest most of the money and use some of the money for day to day expenses.

Jamie now has a clear picture of the problem and the objective. She then defines a scenario for Shoko to test her proposed solution.

Jamie contacts several banks and brokerages looking for the best deal for Shoko. Jamie is looking for the equivalent of a cash management account. One bank agrees to retrieve the money and place it in an investment account with check and debit card access. There will be no charge for the retrieval and coin processing as long as Jamie maintains a minimum investment balance of $50,000 for the next 12 months. Shoko can invest the money in any financial instruments available through the bank's investment service.

Jamie spent about 3 hours on the project, and bills Shoko her normal minimum 1-day rate of $1,000.

Kuan-Yin, on the other hand, has learned from hard experience that if you don't know where you are going, it's best to map out the territory before you begin the expedition; and never trust someone else's map.

Let's return to our discussion of business models. An end-to-end thread validates the business model. Now, let's examine the problem description that we were given. Do we have a clear understanding of what is needed?

Let's take a look at how an architect goes about problem definition.

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