Begin with the person doing the work
Ask what someone needs to decide or complete during a normal shift. A restaurant operator may need to progress an order; an administrator may need to reconcile a receipt. Write those actions down as short scenarios. A dashboard becomes easier to scope when every screen supports a named action rather than a vague desire to see everything.
Name the records and their owners
List the entities involved: orders, customers, products, invoices or attendance records. For each, define the source of truth and who may create, edit or archive it. Distinguish a current value, such as a catalog price, from a historical fact, such as the price recorded on an invoice. This prevents later changes from accidentally rewriting earlier transactions.
Model states before drawing charts
An order might move from submitted to accepted to completed, with cancellation as a separate path. Decide which transitions are allowed, who can make them and what needs to be recorded. A chart of completed orders is only meaningful once “completed” has a consistent definition in the underlying workflow.
Write down reporting definitions
For every reported number, specify the date range, timezone, included states and treatment of deleted or canceled records. For example, a collections view should say whether it groups by invoice date or receipt date. Put the same definition in the interface and the query so that a polished chart does not conceal ambiguous accounting.
Include the unglamorous screens
Search, empty states, validation, correction workflows and permission errors deserve scope alongside the overview. A useful first release may need a clear table and a reliable edit flow more urgently than a wall of graphs. Choose the simplest presentation that lets the operator complete the task correctly.
Turn the workflow into acceptance criteria
Use concrete scenarios: an authorized staff member records a receipt; an unauthorized account cannot change it; the record appears under the agreed reporting period. Attach these checks to a milestone. They create a shared definition of completion for the developer and the business owner.