Solution Design and Technical Discovery
Technical discovery is where the architect converts business questions into measurable, defensible requirements before a single variable is created. The candidate must be fluent in the discovery artifacts: business objectives and KPIs, a KPI-to-dimension matrix, stakeholder and reporting inventory, system and integration maps, and a documented measurement plan. Understand the difference between a business requirement (what decision the organization must make), a functional requirement (what the tool must do), and a technical specification (exact variable, format, trigger, and owner).
Solution design also covers the reference architecture: report suite strategy, data layer contract, identity model, and the boundary between Adobe-side configuration and client-side code. Know when a single global report suite with virtual report suites beats multiple base report suites, and when a separate report suite is justified by data isolation, legal scope, or differing variable semantics.
Traps in questions: confusing a KPI with a dimension; proposing tracking before the decision is defined; assuming the Adobe client-side library alone satisfies an identity requirement; treating a stakeholder's requested report as the requirement rather than the decision behind it. Watch for options that add variables without a documented use case, and for designs that silently break downstream segmentation by using high-cardinality free-text props.
Rule of thumb: no variable, event, or report suite exists without a row in the measurement plan naming the decision it supports, its owner, and its expected cardinality. If a proposed element cannot be traced to a decision, it is a design defect, not a nice-to-have.
Worked example: a retailer asks for 'engagement reporting.' Discovery reveals the real decision is whether to promote a new checkout flow. The measurable requirement becomes funnel completion rate by checkout variant, which dictates an eVar for variant, events for step views and orders, and a virtual report suite scoped to the test period.