The Answer
One number owns the screen. Everything else is one tap down.
Radically reductive. The Overview stops being a report and becomes a verdict: 11 of 16 stores likely to open in the next twelve months, with 5 stores of exposure between the plan and the forecast. Built for a CEO who opens this on a phone between meetings and needs the answer before the elevator doors close.
Laptop view at full scale. Swipe sideways to pan.
Confidence-weighted against the 16 deals whose target period falls inside the window. 5 stores of exposure between the plan and the forecast.
Weights are planning assumptions, tunable in one config, not a prediction the system computed. Construction 95% · Permitting 85% · Lease 75% · Committee 60%. All 25 statuses are Draft.
Confidence-weighted against the 16 deals whose target period falls inside the window. 5 stores of exposure between the plan and the forecast.
Weights are planning assumptions, tunable in one config, not a prediction the system computed. Construction 95% · Permitting 85% · Lease 75% · Committee 60%. All 25 statuses are Draft.
Gary glancing at a phone. Board slides. The two-second “are we on track” check. It is the only concept that survives being read at arm’s length.
The biweekly working session. It hides every detail Kirsten needs, and it stakes the whole screen on weights nobody has ratified yet. Get the weights wrong and the headline is confidently wrong.
The Timeline
Kill the matrix. Put the deals on a time ribbon and let the clustering speak.
Quarters across, each deal a chip sitting in its target month, coloured by stage, stacked where they collide. The 504-cell matrix becomes five columns of real ink. Immediately visible and invisible in v3: three empty months, then 10 openings in Q1 2027 and 5 in April alone. A moved date leaves a ghost marker behind it.
Laptop view at full scale. Swipe sideways to pan.
Nothing targeted
Nothing targeted
Read the shape. Three empty months, then 10 openings land in Q1 2027 and 5 in April alone. The ghost marker on Liberty Hill shows the mechanic for a moved date. It is illustrative only: no slippage history exists yet, and the baseline starts at the first v4 snapshot.
Nothing targeted
Nothing targeted
Read the shape. Three empty months, then 10 openings land in Q1 2027 and 5 in April alone. The ghost marker on Liberty Hill shows the mechanic for a moved date. It is illustrative only: no slippage history exists yet, and the baseline starts at the first v4 snapshot.
Capacity and sequencing conversations. Construction scheduling. Anywhere the question is “can we absorb that” rather than “how many”.
A phone at a glance. It asks for a second of reading, and Gary may not give it one. It also inherits the honesty problem: every target period is Draft, so the clustering it reveals is only as real as Kirsten’s confirmation.
The Funnel
Change the question from when deals open to where they stall.
Reframes from time to flow. Volume at each step, Committee 9 into Lease 4 into Permitting 2 into Construction 1, with ageing beside each bar and a stall list on the right. The ageing ladder is real and it climbs cleanly: 26d, 89d, 148d, 286d. It answers the one question the other two cannot.
Laptop view at full scale. Swipe sideways to pan.
Stage funnel standing volume, 17 working deals
Stall list oldest first
- Liberty Hill Tenant Construction · target Nov ’26 286days
- Charlotte South Permits · target Jan ’27 148days
- Dallas North – McKinney & Frisco Permits · target Jan ’27 148days
- Tucson Documents Pending · target Feb ’27 117days
- Nashville Lease Preparation · target Feb ’27 109days
- Scottsdale04-002
- Charlotte – Location #237-002
- San Antonio Northwest48-010
- San Antonio Northeast48-011
- Houston West – Sugar Land / Katy48-013
Honest caveat. Age is measured from Onboarding Start Date, the only real date on these records. True days-in-stage starts accruing at the first v4 snapshot.
Stage funnel standing volume, 17 working deals
Stall list oldest first
- Liberty Hill Tenant Construction · target Nov ’26 286days
- Charlotte South Permits · target Jan ’27 148days
- Dallas North – McKinney & Frisco Permits · target Jan ’27 148days
- Tucson Documents Pending · target Feb ’27 117days
- Nashville Lease Preparation · target Feb ’27 109days
- Scottsdale04-002
- Charlotte – Location #237-002
- San Antonio Northwest48-010
- San Antonio Northeast48-011
- Houston West – Sugar Land / Katy48-013
Honest caveat. Age is measured from Onboarding Start Date, the only real date on these records. True days-in-stage starts accruing at the first v4 snapshot.
Kirsten’s worklist and the coach call. It is the only concept that produces a to-do rather than a status, and the “5 deals with no clock running” panel is worth the build on its own.
Today, honestly. Half of it is a promise. Conversion rates need two snapshots and the first is today, and the ageing runs on Onboarding Start Date as a proxy because true days-in-stage does not exist yet. This concept is strongest ninety days from now.
Ship A as the hero, B underneath it, C as its own view.
If forced to one, I take B, The Timeline. It surfaces something nobody currently knows: 10 of 17 deals land in a single quarter and 5 in a single month. That is a capacity problem hiding inside a status report, and no grid was ever going to show it. The three answer three different questions though, and the Overview has room for two of them.
The weighted hero, roughly a third of the screen. Gary gets the verdict without scrolling, and the phone version is the whole first screen.
Replaces the matrix outright. The quarter ribbon becomes the working surface for the biweekly call, with months available on demand.
Kirsten's worklist. It deserves a nav item beside Real Estate, where a stall list has room to breathe.
Reasoning, and what I would watch
- A alone is too thin. One number is perfect for the phone and thin for the working session. It also puts the entire headline on stage weights nobody has ratified. Ship it with the weights visible on screen, as drawn here, or it becomes a number people argue with rather than act on.
- B is the biggest information gain per pixel. Same data as the matrix, roughly ten times the ink per cell, fits a phone without sideways scrolling, and the empty quarters carry as much meaning as the full ones. The slippage ghost is the piece worth building properly, because a date that keeps moving is the strongest signal in development.
- C came out weaker than the brief hoped, and the cause is the data. Conversion between stages cannot be drawn today, because rates need two snapshots and the first one is today. Ageing runs on
Onboarding Start Dateas a proxy, since true days-in-stage does not exist yet, and 5 deals have no start date at all. What C does deliver today is the stall list and the no-clock panel, and both are genuinely useful. Ninety days of snapshots turn it into the strongest of the three. - The counts are real, the dates are not confirmed. Committee 9, Lease 4, Permitting 2, Construction 1, Open 8, At Risk 1. All 25 statuses carry Draft confidence. Whichever direction wins, the clustering, the gap, and the stall list all move once Kirsten confirms.