Lab 09 — Multi-source business investigation

Department and industry focus

Strategy / programme office pulling a cross-functional readiness view together for the leadership QBR — spanning marketing, legal, finance, and operations across business units.

Scenario

The Researcher agent performs multi-step, source-aware investigation across many files. Commission a rigorous readiness briefing that separates evidence from inference and is defensible in front of leadership.

Learning objectives

• Frame a research question with explicit scope, sources, and an evidence standard.
• Require per-claim source attribution and an evidence-vs-assumption split.
• Direct multi-step reasoning across documents and data.
• Stress-test completeness and source coverage.

Exercise 1 — Commission the briefing

• Open the Researcher agent and add the five source files listed above.

Act as a programme director. Research the readiness of Contoso Group for the
quarterly business review.
Sources: the project charter, the marketing campaign brief, the contract
review notes, the budget variance workbook, and the operations KPI workbook.
Produce a briefing with:
- Executive summary
- Key findings, each with the supporting source named
- Evidence vs assumptions (two clearly separated lists)
- Risks and dependencies with severity, by business unit where relevant
- Decisions required, written for leadership
- Open questions the sources cannot answer
Do not fill gaps with general knowledge; mark unknowns as unknown.

Expected result

• Findings are traceable to named sources; inference is separated from fact.
• Decisions are leadership-ready, not raw notes; unknowns are explicitly listed.

Exercise 2 — Deepen a single thread

Take the top risk from your briefing and investigate it end to end across
all sources: where it originates, how it shows up in the data, and which
decision could increase or reduce it. Produce a cause-effect chain with
sources.

Exercise 3 — Completeness and coverage check

Review your own briefing for gaps. Which sources did you rely on most, which
did you barely use, and what additional evidence would materially change the
conclusions? List what a reviewer should verify first.

⚠️ Validation focus: Confirm every major finding is tied to a named source, unknowns are labelled, and the agent did not substitute general knowledge for missing programme facts.