The Findings

We classified work in complex systems into three stages. A pattern emerged.

Stage 1: Discovery

80% of the work happens here — mapping context, dependencies, and constraints before anything can move.

Stage 2: Design

19% of the work happens here — deciding what to change, in what order, without breaking what already works

Stage 3: Build

Execution is both the smallest sliver and the largest opportunity. When understanding carries forward, Build expands (by an average of 4X).

The Path Forward

The 80% problem is solved by turning understanding into action. That means creating a real-time, queryable view of your system, that way discovery, design, and build are connected into a single motion instead of three distinct handoffs.

Connect your system

Live, structured access to enterprise systems — so the 80% of work that lives in tickets, Slack, and tribal memory becomes a persistent, queryable layer instead of a recurring excavation.

Contextualize automatically

Metadata, dependencies, and business logic resolved into a unified, queryable model of the system that agents and teams can reason over together.

Reason with Agents

Changes implemented with full system visibility and governance—execution that follows from understanding, not in spite of it.

the state of enterprise systems