A sample built on fictional content. Whitlow Ferris Partners is not a real firm and this reflects no real engagement.

A new consultant asks how the firm does something. Watch it get answered, with the module cited.

Whitlow Ferris Partners is a fictional management consulting firm that works for private-equity portfolio companies. It runs Microsoft 365, BigTime, HubSpot, and QuickBooks Online, and its method and its positions have been organized and approved. The questions a new hire asks in the first year, how the firm runs a module, who has to be on site, what the firm thinks about a pricing question, now go to a desk that answers from the playbook, the approved positions, and past readouts, and shows where each answer came from. When the firm has no written position, the desk says so and routes the question to the partner who owns it, once. Each step below is the screen a real person would be looking at.

What it is worth

The value in this workflow is the time it takes a new hire to run a module alone, and the questions that stop reaching Priya Raman. At Whitlow Ferris, the last six hires reached sixty percent utilization at a median of 7.5 months, against the four to five months the partners expected. The diagnosis measured proposal development and not this workflow, so no number is put on it here.

Teams Search ─ ▢ ✕

Activity Chat Teams Calendar

Chat

Playbook desk

You: How does the firm run week one…

Priya Raman

Thanks, will look tonight

Jen Halvorsen

Steering deck skeleton is in the folder

Playbook desk

Answers from the playbook, the approved positions, and past readouts. Cites every answer.

Aisha Bell9:40 AM

Morning. Greg wants me ready to help on the next working-capital diagnostic. How does the firm run week one? I’ve got PB v3 from SharePoint and a v4 draft someone sent me, and they don’t agree on the order.

Playbook deskAPP9:40 AM

Week one is the data request, the kickoff, and the extract validation, in that order. PB-100 v4, module 4, sections 4.1 to 4.3.

The data request list (4.1) goes to the company’s finance lead before kickoff. The kickoff (4.2) is on site on day one, sets the weekly cadence, and names the module reviewer. The extract validation (4.3) ties every extract to the trial balance before analysis starts. PB-100 v4 is the approved version; v3 and the OneDrive draft are superseded. The three steps are Priya Raman’s approved position. The two readouts below are kept records of what happened on one engagement, not a rule, and CASE-2598 was a pricing diagnostic, cited for its data-request approach only.

Approved position Kept records

Aisha Bell9:42 AM

Thanks. Reading 2611 first, then I’ll get rid of the v3 copy.

Ask the playbook desk

9:40Six weeks in, Aisha had two copies of the playbook open and no way to tell which one to follow. The desk answered from the approved version, cited the module and the sections, and named the two readouts to read, with a note that one of them applies only for its data request.

Teams Search ─ ▢ ✕

Activity Chat Teams Calendar

Chat

Playbook desk

You: Can I go to the site on my own…

Tom Okafor

Count observation is Tuesday, plan Monday

Erin Castellano

Tolland extract log is in the folder

Playbook desk

Answers from the playbook, the approved positions, and past readouts. Cites every answer.

Ben Trask11:15 AM

Tom has the Tolland inventory count observation set for Tuesday. He and Erin both have the data-cleanup session with Tolland’s controller that morning. Can I go to the site on my own and run it?

Playbook deskAPP11:15 AM

Not on your own. ST-5: no associate is alone on a client site in the first ninety days.

Your start date in BigTime is September 8, 2026, so Tuesday is day fifteen of ninety. ST-5 also says every module has a named reviewer, and on ENG-2634 that is Tom Okafor, engagement manager. The rule is Priya Raman’s, and any exception to it is hers, not the desk’s.

Approved position What was checked

Ask Tom Okafor whether you can go with Erin Castellano, or whether the count moves to a day one of them can be there. Tom is the named reviewer on ENG-2634, and the staffing decision is his.

Ben Trask11:16 AM

Got it. Asking Tom now.

Ask the playbook desk

11:15The desk did not judge whether Ben was ready. It applied ST-5, checked his start date against the ninety days, and named the person who decides. The rule and its owner are on the screen, so Ben can see where the answer came from.

Teams Search ─ ▢ ✕

Activity Chat Teams Calendar

Chat

Playbook desk

You: Do we have a position on pricing…

Jen Halvorsen

Let me know what you find

David Nwosu

Draft slides by 3?

Playbook desk

Answers from the playbook, the approved positions, and past readouts. Cites every answer.

Kyle Brandt1:20 PM

Dan Kowalczyk asked Jen on yesterday’s Beltline call whether we’d take on carve-out support and how we price it. Jen asked me to find the firm’s position before she answers him. Do we have one? Fixed fee or T&M?

Playbook deskAPP1:20 PM

The firm has no documented position on pricing carve-out support.

FR-2 covers fixed-fee diagnostics and 100-day plans, repeat-sponsor discounts, and the floor that needs Ellen Marchetti’s written approval, and it does not reach carve-out support. What was found: Marcus Delgado scopes carve-out support case by case, and two past carve-out proposals are on file as kept records, one at time and materials and one at a fixed fee, with no rule behind either. Neither is the firm’s position, so no answer is given.

What was checked Kept records

Routed to Marcus Delgado once, as the owner of sponsor pricing under FR-2. When his position is recorded, this question is answered from it.

Kyle Brandt1:22 PM

Thanks. I’ll tell Jen it’s with Marcus.

Playbook deskAPP4:22 PM

Answered from FR-3 · Carve-out support pricing, recorded by Marcus Delgado at 4:20 PM.

Carve-out support is scoped as time and materials for the first four weeks at RC-2026 weekly rates, and converted to a fixed fee once the separation scope is known. The reason is recorded with the position: the scope of a carve-out depends on the transition services agreement, which is rarely settled when the proposal goes out.

Approved position

Kyle Brandt4:25 PM

Perfect. Sending it to Jen.

Ask the playbook desk

WKFR-3 · WFP Knowledge +

‹ › ↻🔒whitlowferris.sharepoint.com/sites/knowledge/positions/FR-3

SharePointSearch this site

WKWFP Knowledge

FR-3 · Carve-out support pricing

ApprovedMarcus Delgado · Friday 4:20 PM

The position

Carve-out support is proposed as time and materials for the first four weeks, at RC-2026 weekly rates, and converted to a fixed fee for the remainder once the separation scope is known: the entities, the systems to be separated, and the services in the transition services agreement. The conversion point is written into the SOW at the end of week four.

The reason, recorded with the position

The scope of a carve-out depends on what the buyer and the seller agree in the transition services agreement, and that is rarely settled when the proposal goes out. A fixed fee at that point is a guess in either direction. Four weeks is enough to read the agreement and the systems, and the sponsor gets a fixed fee for the part that can be scoped.

History

Fri 1:20 PMAsked by Kyle Brandt for Jen Halvorsen, after a Larkspur Ridge question about carve-out support. The desk answered “not documented” and routed the question.

Fri 4:20 PMRecorded by Marcus Delgado. The reason is recorded above, next to the position it explains.

Mon, Sep 21To be confirmed at the partners’ meeting on Monday, September 21. The position stands as recorded until then.

Since thenThe desk answers this question from FR-3, citing it. It does not reach Marcus again unless the position needs a fresh look.

Changelog

2026-09-18 16:20FR-3 added · Carve-out support pricing · owner Marcus Delgado · source: the playbook desk, a question from Kyle Brandt · closes the known gap “pricing for carve-out support”.

1:20, then 4:20The desk checked the fee position and the two past proposals, found that nothing settles the question, and said so. Marcus was asked once. His position went in that afternoon with its reason next to it, and the desk answered Kyle from it before the end of the day.

Under the hood· what ran, and where everything lives · drawn by Ermetis, not an app─ ▢ ✕

What runs it

The playbook desk is software configured in the firm’s own Microsoft 365 tenant. It reads the WFP Knowledge library, the approved positions, the engagement records, and the BigTime staff records under the permissions the firm already set. Nothing in this workflow leaves the tenant.

The model reads, retrieves, and words the answer. It does not decide. It finds the module, the position, or the record and answers from it. The rule check (a start date against the ninety days in ST-5) is plain code. The decisions stayed with Tom Okafor, Priya Raman, and Marcus Delgado.

How an answer is graded

An approved position first. If a position or a playbook module covers the question, the answer comes from it, cites it, and names the owner. A kept record comes second and is marked as a record: a past readout or proposal is offered as what happened once, never as a rule, which is why CASE-2598 arrived with its caveat.

Neither tier: not documented. The desk says so, shows what it checked, and routes the question to the owner once. It does not compose a plausible position from the records, and it does not ask the owner a second time.

What gets recorded

The answer that becomes an entry. The position from Marcus went in as FR-3 with its reason and a changelog line, and the desk has answered from it since. Every question, answer, and route is logged; the questions the desk could not answer are the list of what the firm has not written down yet.

This is the whole machine. The playbook, the positions, and the records stay where they live, one piece of software inside the tenant reads them in a fixed order, every answer shows its tier and its source, and the questions nothing settles go to a person once and come back as entries.

What this took, in this fictional world

The question from Aisha was answered from the approved module in seconds, with the two readouts to read named. The question from Ben was answered by a rule with its owner shown, and the decision went to Tom Okafor. The question from Kyle reached Marcus Delgado once and came back as FR-3 the same afternoon. In the demo week, twenty-two questions came to the desk; one went to an engagement manager for a staffing decision and one to a partner for a position. Before the system, most of the twenty-two were messages to Priya Raman.

The same workflow, elsewhere

At a law firm, this is a first-year associate asking how the firm runs a diligence review, answered from the practice manual with the precedent matters named. At an accounting firm, it is a new senior asking which engagement letter is current and who approves a scope change. At an engineering practice, it is the drawing standard and the last project that used it. The pattern is the same: answered from what the firm has approved, past matters marked as records, and an honest “not documented” when it is not.