Worked Example: Rebuild Cost From First Principles
Use first-principles decomposition to challenge a cost estimate and identify testable drivers.
A vendor quotes $180,000 for a migration of 240,000 customer records. Mei needs to know what driver makes the quote high. First-principles estimate: units -> work steps -> rate -> uncertainty driver -> test The common trap is negotiating from vibes: asking for a discount because the quote feels high. That misses the causal driver. If exception rate is the real cost, the best move is a sample test or source cleanup, not a generic discount request. Step 1 Break the job into primitives: extract, map, transform, validate, resolve exceptions, support cutover. This removes the vendor's bundled number and exposes…
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