The moment the words 'intelligent upgrade' appear, meetings tend to dissolve. Too big: anyone can stuff anything into it, you can't quote it, and you can't sign off on it either.
Our approach is not to engage with the phrase. Start with three lists on a whiteboard.
List One: What Is Running Today
Itemize every system, every spreadsheet — even a file sitting on one person's computer. That day we listed 11 items: three were Excel files, two were an unmaintained legacy admin panel, and one was 'the report we ask Lao Wang for every month.' Lao Wang was in the room, and he laughed too.
This list turns 'the current state' into something visible. Many modernization projects stall because the two sides were never actually looking at the same status quo in their heads.
List Two: What Gets Repeated Every Day and Week
Don't write 'process optimization.' Write concrete actions: who, at what time, opens what, copies which columns, sends to whom. We logged nine repeated actions; the most time-consuming was pasting four departments' daily reports into one master sheet every morning — forty-plus minutes.
Whatever can be automated is basically hiding in this list. And priority doesn't need arguing — just sort by time consumed.
List Three: Which Decisions Currently Rest on Gut Feel
Like 'should we restock this batch' or 'should we chase this client this month.' These are the hardest, and the easiest to overreach on with algorithms. We usually ask first: what is the basis for the gut call, and can it be written as three rules? If yes, write the rules first. If not, note it down and leave it alone. Don't force it.
Of the three that day, two could be written as rules; on the third the client himself said 'it depends,' so it stayed shelved.
After the Lists Were Filled
Once all three lists were done, nobody mentioned those four characters on the whiteboard again. What shipped was two features: four daily reports auto-consolidated into one sheet, and contract-expiry reminders sent to the right person seven days ahead. Three weeks in total.
The client was a little deflated at first — 'that's it?' After two months of running, the forty-minute chore was gone and no renewals were missed. Later they came back on their own to add two more items, both picked from List Two.
I don't usually tell people to aim smaller. It's just that once 'what are we actually doing right now' gets written down clearly, the goal often shrinks on its own.
