The conceptual model is finished, and from here on it gets built. The shortest implementation route from source to finished report is the one that skips a whole layer of the architecture, and it works, too — for as long as the assumptions behind it hold.
How many employees do we have? Yerodin has been asking for three weeks. He does get answers, just a different number every time, and not one of them comes with a reason why that one should be the right one. Nothing is missing in the systems, not a row and not a status, and something is missing all the same — it simply never got written down, because nobody ever decided it.
How many vehicles does Sales actually use? That is the kind of question you assume is already answered before you ask it. The table shows which person belongs to which vehicle, and it is well maintained — no gaps, nothing null. What it does not tell you is whether that person was assigned the car or actually drove it, and the answer turns on exactly that.
In most projects the first table exists before the first definition. That is understandable — you can show a table, while a definition first has to be agreed on. And that agreement decides whether you end up with answers or with numbers three departments argue about.
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