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Raw Notes Example
About these notes
I’m dropping this file (but could be any notes file) into a local interview-notes folder.
Claude is then scraping the content of those notes, matching against a local cache of the customer list and then pushing summary notes into the interviews table in this doc.
See for the summarized notes.
@Centerville TX - Budgeting & Org Structure Flexibility
# Customer Interview – Budgeting Tool (Raw Notes / Scratchpad)
*(very rough, incomplete, not cleaned up)*
---
## Context / Who
- mid-size org, ~2–3k employees
- multiple cost centers, matrix org
- finance owns tool, but HR + dept heads constantly feeding changes
- budgeting cycle = ~8–10 weeks (in theory…)
---
## Current Pain
- “We basically restart every time something changes”
- org structure changes **constantly**
- re-orgs
- team splits / merges
- new VPs
- cost center realignment
- tool assumes org is *static* once budget starts
- once hierarchy changes → budget breaks / invalid
- no clean way to “map old → new”
- end up exporting to Excel, manually reconciling, re-uploading
- version hell
- “We’re on v7 before we even finish”
---
## Symptoms
- wasted time (weeks lost)
- people lose confidence in numbers
- approvals reset
- audit trail gets messy
- finance blamed even though changes are upstream
- budgeting becomes political (“don’t change anything yet”)
---
## What Actually Happens
- kickoff budget
- 2–3 weeks in → org announcement
- need to:
- rebuild hierarchy
- reassign owners
- re-approve everything
- sometimes they delay reflecting org change just to finish budget
- knowingly wrong structure
- feels brittle
- “It’s like Jenga”
---
## What They Wish
- “I don’t want to start over just because a team moved”
- ability to adapt mid-stream
- preserve work already done
- clear visibility of what changed + impact
---
## Possible Solution Directions (brain dump, not validated)
### 1. Decouple Budget from Org Hierarchy
- budget lines not hard-bound to org tree
- treat org as a *view*, not a constraint
- re-map dynamically
- budget stays intact, reporting shifts
### 2. Change Sets / Deltas
- org changes captured as “diffs”
- apply delta instead of reset
- show impact preview:
- what moves
- what breaks
- user approves change
### 3. Versioned Org Layers
- snapshot org at start
- allow new org version alongside
- budget can reference multiple org versions
- messy but safer?
- kind of like schema migration
### 4. Soft Freezing / Partial Lock
- only lock certain dimensions
- allow movement within guardrails
- approvals don’t fully reset
- local re-approval instead of global
### 5. Scenario-Based Budgeting
- treat re-org as a scenario
- fork budget automatically
- compare old vs new
- merge back when ready
- heavier mental model, but realistic
---
## Open Questions
- how often are org changes *real* vs provisional?
- who owns truth? HR system vs finance?
- tolerance for temporary inconsistency?
- is speed or auditability more important?
---
## Quotes / Tone
- “Budgeting assumes the org chart is sacred. It’s not.”
- “The tool punishes reality.”
- “We spend more time fixing structure than planning money.”
---
## Overall Feel
- frustration, resignation
- feels like a systemic mismatch
- customer expects change; tool doesn’t
- opportunity around flexibility + resilience
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