Day 1 — Clock's Already Ticking

You arrive at the Walmart Home Office in Bentonville, Arkansas at 7:30 AM. The campus is vast and deliberately understated — no flashy lobbies, no marble floors. The parking lot is already full. Walmart's culture starts early.

Linda Chen meets you at the entrance to Building G — the technology wing. She's carrying two coffees and a printed one-pager. "Welcome. Your first meeting is in 25 minutes — Marcus King's Monday 8 AM operations sync. He's added you to the standing invite. He wants to meet you and hear your Week 1 plan. You have 5 minutes on his agenda."

She hands you the one-pager — it's Marcus's dashboard requirements document, written in his own hand on a single sheet: a list of 6 KPIs he wants visible on every store manager's tablet by Q4. The handwriting is neat, direct, and annotated with notes like 'MUST be real-time' and 'No excuses — every store.'

The 6 KPIs on Marcus's list:
1. Same-store sales (daily, vs. last year)
2. Inventory turn (by department)
3. Shrinkage rate (by store)
4. Labor cost per transaction
5. On-shelf availability (%)
6. Customer traffic count

Linda lowers her voice as you walk to the conference room: "Three of those six don't have approved enterprise KPI definitions. Shrinkage data is quarterly, not real-time. And the Data Governance Council won't meet for another 3 weeks. Marcus doesn't know — or doesn't care — about the governance timeline. He just wants the dashboards. That's your first problem to solve."