Smart Jurisdiction
A feasibility study that ended in a recommendation not to build it.
- Period
- 2024
- Stack
- Java · Spring Boot · Research
Problem
The premise was appealing: could background checks come back in seconds rather than the usual turnaround? Instant results are an obvious differentiator in screening, and the innovation team was asked whether a faster path through the existing flow was achievable.
Approach
Rather than start building the fast path, we started by measuring where the time actually went — which jurisdictions and which stages accounted for the delay, and which of those a short circuit could realistically remove.
Outcome
The premise did not survive the data. Most checks already returned quickly, and the time that remained sat in places a faster pipeline could not eliminate. Building it would have added a parallel path to maintain in exchange for very little a customer would notice, so we recommended against it. I include this deliberately: choosing not to build something, and being able to show why, is as much of the job as shipping.