# Discovery Interview Guide — Engineering Management Suite

**Goal of each interview:** validate or kill the pain and willingness-to-pay
hypotheses. You are **not selling**. You are collecting evidence for the
Concept → Validation gate (see `../01_System/ADVISOR_ASSESSMENT.md` §6).

Log every interview in `INTERVIEW_LOG.md` (same folder) within 24 h.

## Setup

- 30 minutes, video or phone. Record answers, not quotes you can't use.
- Talk to the person who owns delivery pain: managing director, delivery manager,
  or senior/lead engineer. One person per interview.

## Script

### Warm-up (3 min)
1. "Walk me through how a typical project runs here — from winning it to closing it out."
2. "Where does it hurt most in that cycle?"

### Pain validation (10 min) — the numbers that matter
3. "Who drafts your project management plans / proposals / standards, and how long does that take?"
4. "How consistent are your processes between projects? What breaks when a senior person leaves?"
5. "What have you tried to fix this? What did it cost? Why did it stop?"
6. **Rank check:** "If you had a budget for three improvements this year, is this on the list? Where?"

### Past-project leverage (5 min)
7. "If you could press a button and get a first-draft plan/proposal grounded in your last five projects, what would that be worth per month?"

### Willingness-to-pay (5 min) — ask, don't push
8. "Firms like yours typically pay $8–15k for a foundation install and $1–2.5k/month ongoing for a managed system. Does that sound plausible, cheap, or out of reach? What would make it worth it?"
9. "Who else would need to agree to spend that?"

### Close (5 min)
10. "Is there anyone else you'd suggest I talk to?"
11. If enthusiasm is genuine: "When I run the first pilot cohort, may I come back to you?"

## Scoring each interview (fill in the log)

| Signal | Count it when |
|---|---|
| **Pain validated** | They rank the problem top-3 unprompted (Q6) |
| **Quantified pain** | They give real hours/cost figures (Q3/Q4) |
| **Pay signal** | Q8 answer is "plausible" or "cheap" **with** a condition stated |
| **Warm lead** | They accept a follow-up or referral (Q10/Q11) |

**Gate arithmetic:** ≥40% pain-validated and ≥3 pay signals across 12–13
interviews → proceed to Validation. Below that → park (the assessment §11).