meta-operational-readiness-due-diligence

Operational Readiness Due Diligence

Use When

• A plan must demonstrate that its operating model can work in a named country or market.
• Banking, tax, licences, payroll, FX, compliance, logistics, privacy, public-sector interface, or local-partner assumptions affect viability.
• A plan needs one cross-section readiness matrix before operations, financial projections, risk, or investor review is finalised.

Do Not Use When

• The request is only to draft the operations, financial-projections, or risk section; route to that section skill and add this route when cross-section readiness is material.
• The work contains current legal, tax, payroll, regulatory, privacy, banking, or FX claims but has not been routed to Digital Research and Chwezi Accounting Doctrine where applicable.

Required Inputs

Artefact	Source/provider	Required?	If absent
Country, operating sites, business model, transaction flows, currencies, regulated activities, and launch decision	Client intake and approved plan brief	Yes	Stop and return the missing context questions
Staffing model, payroll assumptions, vendors, logistics paths, data flows, and technology architecture	Management evidence, discovery, or approved assumptions	Yes	Mark the affected point NOT_ASSESSED
Tax, licensing, privacy, banking, FX, and compliance evidence	Digital Research source register, Chwezi doctrine, and qualified reviewers	Conditional but required for final claims	Keep the claim qualified and block certification
Integrated model, risk register, milestones, and funding/use-of-funds logic	Plan owners and finance model	Yes for release	Return contradictions to the owning section

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Acceptance condition
Ten-point operational-readiness matrix	Plan owner, investor/lender reviewer, and section owners	Each point has status, evidence, owner, next action, timing, and consequence
Banking, tax, licensing, payroll, FX, and compliance action register	Operations and finance owners	Current claims are source-linked; planning assumptions have a review date and sensitivity
Vendor/data/stakeholder/partnership readiness map	Operations, risk, technology, and governance owners	Dependencies, service expectations, decision rights, and fallback paths are explicit
Cross-section reconciliation note	Orchestrator and release reviewer	Operations, model, risk, timeline, funding ask, and assumptions agree or remain blocked

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Readiness matrix and evidence register	Markdown or structured project record	A reviewer can reproduce each status without treating a generic statement as proof
Assumption and sensitivity log	Model/workpaper	Currency, payroll loading, payment costs, compliance timing, and logistics effects are visible
Blocker and handoff log	Stage register or release bundle	Every missing or failed point has an owner, consequence, recovery action, and restart condition

Workflow

1. Freeze the jurisdiction, launch scope, business model, transaction flows, and decision audience. Do not start with a generic country checklist.
2. Translate the ten readiness points into observable tests:
   • banking: account, rails, limits, settlement, multi-currency, integration, reconciliation, and fallback;
   • tax: entity activity, tax classification, indirect-tax treatment, invoicing, filing surface, and reviewer route;
   • licensing: regulated activity, responsible authority, approval dependency, lead time, and launch hold point;
   • payroll: employee/contractor model, fully loaded cost, statutory source dependency, leave/termination exposure, and payment route;
   • FX: billing currency, cost currency, exposure, pricing/reset mechanism, cash buffers, and sensitivity;
   • compliance calendar: registration, filing, renewal, reporting, data, insurance, and contract milestones with owners;
   • logistics: suppliers, last-mile route, service levels, lead times, failure handling, and alternate source;
   • data protection: data classes, residency/transfer, security controls, retention, processor chain, incident route, and reviewer;
   • government interface: policy-monitoring owner, legitimate engagement channels, escalation, and conflict safeguards;
   • local partnerships: role, evidence of standing, due diligence, incentives, deliverables, and exit or substitution path.
3. Classify every item as verified, context-bound, planning-assumption, partial, or NOT_ASSESSED. A user-provided framework is a hypothesis source, not proof of a current rule.
4. Route current legal, tax, licensing, privacy, payroll, FX, and banking claims to Digital Research source evaluation and verification. Route money-flow, payroll, tax, banking, FX, and reporting treatment to Chwezi Accounting Doctrine and the required professional reviewer. Never hardcode a rate, deadline, exemption, or regulator outcome in this skill.
5. Test the consequence of each gap in the operating model, cash flow, margin, runway, schedule, risk register, and funding ask. Add a downside case where the gap can delay launch, increase cost, or reduce collections.
6. Reconcile the matrix with 08-operations-plan, 10-financial-projections, 12-risk-analysis, implementation timing, and funding/use-of-funds. Return contradictions to the owning skill; do not silently choose the most favourable value.
7. Run a compact red-team: ask what would stop launch, freeze cash, invalidate a proposal, create an employee liability, expose customer data, or make a local partner unusable. Record the smallest evidence or experiment that would retire each blocker.
8. Release only when every material point is evidenced or explicitly accepted as a dated, owned, risk-bearing assumption. Otherwise keep the plan's readiness state blocked or NOT_ASSESSED.

Decision Rules

Finding	Action	Failure or risk avoided
A point is described generically, such as “open a corporate account”	Specify the operational requirement, evidence, owner, and fallback	Hidden transaction or settlement bottleneck
A current statutory or regulatory claim lacks a usable source entry	Quarantine it, narrow the wording, and assign a reviewer	False compliance or stale planning
A gap affects launch, cash, margin, data, or legal exposure	Add a hold point, downside case, owner, and recovery action	Optimistic plan that cannot execute
A local partner or vendor is named without role or evidence	Treat it as an unconfirmed dependency and define substitution criteria	Name-dropping and single-counterparty failure
Readiness improves but control, cash, privacy, or delivery quality worsens	Reject or revise the experiment and restore the safe baseline	Local optimisation

Quality Standards

• The matrix is country- and business-model-specific; it does not substitute for legal, tax, banking, privacy, or professional advice.
• Banking, tax, licensing, payroll, FX, and privacy entries state scope, source status, reviewer, review date, uncertainty, and decision consequence.
• Fully loaded payroll includes employer costs and contract/termination exposure without inventing statutory values.
• FX treatment connects price, settlement, cost currency, cash timing, and sensitivity to the model.
• The compliance calendar names owners and triggers; it is not a list of vague “ongoing” tasks.
• Vendor, data, government, and partnership assumptions have evidence, fallback, and exit logic.
• No plan is called bankable, investor-ready, or achievable while a material readiness blocker is unassessed.

Capability Contract

Read, search, calculate, and draft within the authorised workspace. This skill is read-only for audit and review by default. It must not open accounts, register taxes, obtain licences, hire staff, sign vendors, lobby officials, certify compliance, submit a plan, or change approved model assumptions without explicit authority and qualified review.

Degraded Mode

If country, source, model, reviewer, or vendor evidence is unavailable, produce only the supported matrix, return a qualified result, mark the affected item NOT_ASSESSED, state the exact evidence needed, and keep release blocked where the point is material. Never convert a missing check into a pass.

Anti-Patterns

• Generic “local compliance” language. Fix: name the activity, authority, evidence, owner, and hold point.
• Base salary-only budgeting. Fix: show the loaded cost and source-dependent statutory fields.
• One exchange-rate assumption with no exposure logic. Fix: show currencies, observation date/source, reset rule, buffer, and sensitivity.
• Naming a bank, vendor, regulator, or adviser as proof. Fix: record the operational requirement and corroborating evidence.
• Treating a calendar or stakeholder list as control. Fix: add owner, trigger, evidence, escalation, and review cadence.

Worked Example

For a proposed health-data platform in a new country, the plan may say that banking, privacy approval, a hosting route, and a local implementation partner are required. Until current authority evidence, data-flow review, partner due diligence, and a cash/timeline impact are recorded, each item remains NOT_ASSESSED; the model carries a launch hold point and the funding ask does not assume early revenue.

References

• Uganda formalisation and lender-document checklist — read when a Ugandan plan must show registration, tax, NSSF, licensing, sector approvals, record-keeping and lender documents; all fees and thresholds are checks to verify.
• skills/pipeline/08-operations-plan/SKILL.md
• skills/pipeline/10-financial-projections/SKILL.md
• skills/pipeline/12-risk-analysis/SKILL.md
• skills/meta-strategy/meta-due-diligence/SKILL.md
• Digital Research Engine: source-evaluation, source-verification, and docs/continuous-improvement/kaizen-currentness-gate.md
• Chwezi Accounting Doctrine: tax-statutory-source-register-and-country-packs, payroll-and-statutory-postings-east-africa, fx-management-and-hedging, and bank-and-mobile-money-reconciliation