12 March 2026
Interviewing owners before you trust the CMDB
Configuration databases age in silence. By the time a migration advisory starts, half the “authoritative” rows describe systems that were renamed, split, or quietly retired.
We open discovery with owner interviews framed around failure, not architecture pride. Ask what breaks if this host disappears on a Tuesday afternoon. Ask which batch jobs still call it. Ask who gets the angry message from finance when a report is late. The answers redraw the dependency map faster than another export from the discovery tool.
Write the answers in the owner’s words first. Translate to technical edges second. Sponsors need both: the human consequence and the link that causes it.
When two owners disagree, do not average them. Schedule a short confrontation workshop with both present. Migration waves built on unresolved ownership arguments fail at cutover, not in planning slides.