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USA Clay Target - Case Study Summary

What Actually Happened (In Plain English)

USA Clay Target did not have a technology problem.

They had a fragility problem.

A single individual (Jim) carried institutional knowledge for a mission‑critical process. Nothing was broken, nothing had failed, and nothing was on fire - which is precisely why the risk had survived for so long.

This case study documents how the team resisted the urge to "just fix it" and instead forced clarity, ownership, and sequencing before touching a solution.

The Problem Was Narrow - The Work Was Not

The initial pain point was deceptively simple:

If Jim is unavailable, season scoring is at risk.

What followed demonstrated a critical lesson:

  • One problem does not equal one requirement
  • One initiative does not equal one PRD
  • Reducing risk often requires multiple, independent business capabilities

By the end of Stage 3, a single problem had produced:

  • 4 distinct outcomes
  • 4 separate PRDs
  • a mix of funded and deferred work

None of this was accidental.

Discipline Was the Differentiator

At every stage, the team made decisions that felt slower in the moment and faster in hindsight:

  • They documented the problem without proposing solutions
  • They validated evidence without interpreting causes
  • They justified priority without manufacturing urgency
  • They decomposed outcomes without designing systems
  • They wrote PRDs without collapsing them into features

This discipline prevented three common failure modes:

  • building the wrong thing quickly
  • over‑scoping a “simple fix”
  • deferring hard thinking until implementation

Trade‑offs Were Made Explicit (And Survived Contact With Reality)

Not everything was funded.

Outcome 2 (review before publish) was approved for Phase 1. Outcome 4 (stakeholder notifications) was deliberately deferred.

Both decisions were recorded while context was fresh - not rediscovered later through frustration or blame.

This allowed the team to move forward with confidence instead of optimism.

Where the Case Study Intentionally Stops

This case study ends at PRDs on purpose.

Once business requirements are stable, the remaining work becomes largely mechanical:

  • workflow refinement
  • domain part identification
  • structural integration

Important work - but not decision‑dense work.

The goal here was not to show how to build software. It was to show how to decide what should be built, and why.

The Takeaway That Actually Matters

If this process feels boring, that’s a feature.

Boredom is what clarity feels like when chaos has been removed.

USA Clay Target didn’t "solve a problem" - they reduced exposure, created shared understanding, and made intent durable.

Everything else is implementation detail.

Final Thought

Most teams skip this work and hope experience will save them later.

Experience usually arrives as regret.

This case study shows another option.