# How do you assess an IT landscape without months of workshops?

> Canonical: https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-to-assess-an-it-landscape-without-months-of-workshops  
> Published: 2026-10-27 · DecisionPen · Conversion how-tos series (D8c)  
> Related docs: /docs/incremental-modelling, /docs/architecture-decision-workspace, /docs/enterprise-ask, /docs/beyond-traditional-ea

## Summary

Assess a landscape by building the first draft from evidence you already hold and reserving workshops for decisions, contradictions, and gaps — not for reciting an inventory. Documents and spreadsheets produce a proposed map; people correct and judge it. Links to the Discovery Tax (S5a) and the IT landscape discovery guide (S5d).

## Why assessments become months of workshops

Teams schedule sessions per domain and fill repository templates live. People repeat what their own documents already say, detail is uneven, and the record starts ageing at the last session. Expert time is spent on inventory rather than judgement — the Discovery Tax.

## Blank-factsheet theatre

Opening an empty record and asking the room to dictate it looks like progress but duplicates available evidence, depends on attendance, and rarely captures the How and Why. Workshops are for decisions.

## Evidence first

1. Bound the scope: a domain, platform, or transformation boundary plus the decisions to support.
2. Collect existing documents, inventories, integration registers, vendor and hosting lists; a CMDB extract joins as a spreadsheet import.
3. Model automatically into proposed entities, relationships, and descriptions.
4. Triage into confident, conflicting, and missing; curate the confident quickly.
5. Run short, targeted workshops on conflicts and gaps.
6. Assess against the map and record answers with evidence.

Step-by-step detail: https://decisionpen.com/blog/it-landscape-discovery-guide

## What workshops cover instead

Contradictions between sources; gaps (no owner, interfaces, or lifecycle); owner intent; risks and constraints documents only imply; prioritisation for the decision at hand.

## Keeping the assessment current

Keep the curated map as the working record: new documents extend it, decisions write back, and the next assessment starts from current state.

## How DecisionPen solves this

Architecture Decision Workspace: documents in, draft map out via incremental modelling with evidence; spreadsheet imports for inventories and CMDB extracts (file import, no live sync); curation queues for conflicts and gaps; Enterprise Ask with citations; summaries and diagrams generated from curated context rather than drawn separately. Trial: https://decisionpen.com/trial

## When is DecisionPen the wrong tool?

Almost nothing written down (workshops are the only source); live infrastructure scanning; CMDB synchronisation; Visio-style drawing. It does not replace stakeholder conversations about intent and risk.

## FAQ

**How can you assess an IT landscape without months of workshops?**  
Bound the scope, collect existing evidence, model a draft automatically, triage it, and hold short workshops only on conflicts, gaps, and decisions.

**What is blank-factsheet theatre?**  
Filling empty records live from memory — progress theatre that duplicates documents and misses the How and Why.

**What should workshops be used for instead?**  
Contradictions, gaps, owner intent, constraints, and prioritisation.

**How does this relate to the Discovery Tax?**  
Inventory workshops are a large part of it; an evidence-first draft removes most of that cost.

**How do you stop the assessment going stale?**  
Keep the curated map as the working record and extend it with new evidence and decisions.

**When is DecisionPen the wrong tool?**  
When little is documented, or you need scanning, CMDB sync, or a drawing tool.

## Related posts

- https://decisionpen.com/blog/it-landscape-discovery-guide  
- https://decisionpen.com/blog/what-is-the-discovery-tax-in-it-transformations  
- https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-to-start-ea-from-documents-in-30-days  
- https://decisionpen.com/blog/why-enterprise-architecture-runs-on-tribal-knowledge  
- https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-should-humans-review-and-curate-ai-proposed-architecture-models  
- https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-to-keep-ea-factsheets-current-with-ai-descriptions-and-relation-recommendations

## Series (Conversion how-tos)

- D8a — https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-to-fast-track-ma-it-due-diligence-with-automated-landscape-modelling  
- D8b — https://decisionpen.com/blog/how-to-build-application-dependency-maps-from-existing-documentation  
- D8c — This post
- D8d, D8e — forthcoming