Starting Light: Tell Us Who You Are and What Keeps You Up at Night

• Which of these best describes your role in the verification/tapeout process? Options: Verification Engineer, Verification Manager, Director/VP of Engineering, Firmware/Software Lead, Product Owner, EDA/Tools Engineer, Other
• Briefly describe the most recent respin or near-miss your team experienced (what failed, when, and at what stage).
• How did that event change the way your team talks about risk and signoff? Options: Raised urgency across the org, Triggered a tools/process review, Caused schedule and resource shifts, No meaningful long-term change, Other
• How often do you experience serious functional bugs that escape pre-silicon verification? Options: Multiple times per year, About once a year, Once every few years, Rarely/Never
• What single metric do you check first when assessing whether a design is ready for tapeout? Options: Functional coverage %, Escaped bug rate (bugs/tapeout), Regression runtime, Emulation full-chip passes, Customer/field bug history, Other

Are We Waiting for Failure? — Reframing How You Measure Risk

• If your current verification flow were guaranteed to miss one last class of bugs, what kind of bug would you expect it to be and why?
• What are the top three functional areas or blocks where coverage keeps getting stuck or regressing?
• What current coverage number do you consider 'comfortably signoff-ready' for your largest SoC blocks? Options: >98%, 95–97%, 90–94%, 85–89%, <85%
• Which observability gap do you feel is most responsible for missed issues (select the best fit)? Options: Insufficient stimulus/firmware, Limited system-level runs, Poor VIP or protocol models, Instrumentation blind spots, Coverage metric mismatch across tools
• When you dig into a coverage shortfall, what first surprises you most—lack of tests, tool limits, testbench brittleness, or an unexpected design corner? Options: Lack of tests, Tool limitations, Testbench brittleness, Unexpected design corner, Other

Which Hidden Costs Keep You Up at Night?

• How much did the last respin or major bug cost in direct headcount and schedule (pick the closest range)? Options: <$500k, $500k–$2M, $2M–$5M, >$5M, Not quantified
• Beyond dollars, which secondary costs hit you hardest after a failure (choose all that apply)? Options: Lost market window, Customer trust impact, Team burnout and attrition, Contractual penalties, Longer verification cycles
• How many person-months did your verification/debug team spend on the most recent respin activity (approx)? Options: <1 month, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6–12 months, >12 months, Unknown
• Tell us about a specific debugging scenario that took far longer than expected—what made it so sticky?
• If you could eliminate one recurring cost tied to verification, what would it be and why?

Who's Really Holding the Button? — Decisions, Politics, and Timelines

• If a new emulation/verification platform delivered measurable advantages, who in your organization must be convinced before you can proceed? Options: Verification Manager, VP/Director of Engineering, Product Management, Firmware/Software Lead, Procurement, Legal/Security, Other
• Which stakeholder cares most about throughput (runtime/gate capacity) vs. which cares most about debug usability? Please list names/titles and their primary concern.
• What timeline do decision-makers expect for an evaluation to conclude and for a procurement decision to be made? Options: <1 month, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6–12 months, TBD/no deadline
• Are there procurement, security, or compliance gates that typically delay tool/stack evaluations in your company? Options: Yes—security review, Yes—procurement approval, Yes—legal/contracts, No significant gates, Other
• Who will be responsible for migrating testbenches and VIP if we move forward, and how much ramp time can they allocate?

Imagine Signoff Day: The Things You Won’t Compromise On

• If you must pick one non-negotiable acceptance criterion for a pilot, what is it (coverage, escaped bug reduction, runtime, or migration cost)? Options: Coverage improvement (absolute %), Reduced escaped bugs, Runtime reduction (per regression), Migration effort/cost limit, Debug productivity gains
• What absolute coverage delta (percentage points) or escaped-bug reduction would make you say the pilot 'succeeded'? Options: >10 percentage points, 5–10 percentage points, 2–5 percentage points, <2 percentage points, Prefer not to quantify yet
• How much additional migration effort (person-months per 1M lines of testbench or per major block) would you consider acceptable? Options: <1 month, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, >6 months, Unsure
• What constitutes an acceptable rollback or exit—what would have to fail for you to stop the project?
• Who will own the final verification signoff and what artefacts/reporting do they expect to see?

What Would Success Feel Like—Not Just Look Like

• Beyond metrics, what cultural or team-level change would convince you this solution was worth the switch (e.g., fewer late nights, higher morale, clearer ownership)?
• Which debug pain point, if solved, would immediately free up the team to focus on higher-value work? Options: Faster trace capture/analysis, Unified coverage reporting, Less brittle testbenches, Simpler RTL partitioning for emulation, Better cross-tool workflows
• How would reduced verification time translate into business outcomes for you (pick top impacts)? Options: Earlier time-to-market, Lower R&D spend, Improved product quality, More cycles for innovation, Better customer satisfaction
• Describe a future state where signoff feels ‘easy’—what daily differences does your team experience?
• Who on your team needs to feel the day-to-day benefits for this to be considered a true success?

What Would We Need to Prove in a Side‑by‑Side Run?

• What would be the single most persuasive demonstration of value in a side-by-side run with your test suites? Options: Coverage closure on representative blocks, Discovery of previously unknown system bugs, Full-chip firmware-driven run, Significant runtime reduction, Debug workflow speedups
• Which blocks or subsystems must be included in the pilot to convince you the results will scale to full SoC?
• What existing tests and resources are available to run in the pilot (simulation regressions, full-system firmware, VIP, formal properties)? Options: Block-level regressions, Full-system firmware scenarios, Protocol/VIP regressions, Formal property suites, None ready
• What access will you be comfortable providing for a pilot (RTL, testbenches, firmware images, golden references)? Options: Full RTL and testbenches, RTL with NDA and controlled access, Testbench-only runs, Limited data due to IP concerns, Unsure—need to check
• How quickly do you expect pilot results (e.g., initial side-by-side) once work begins? Options: <2 weeks, 2–4 weeks, 1–2 months, 2–3 months, Longer
• What measurements and artifacts must we deliver at the end of the pilot to make a clear decision? Options: Unified coverage report, Bug discovery log with root cause, Runtime/throughput benchmarks, Debug case study with time-to-fix, Migration effort estimate

What Could Kill This Before It Starts? — Surface the Real Risks

• What single concern would make you stop the evaluation before it completes (e.g., migration cost, data security, lack of demonstrable scale)? Options: Migration effort too high, Security/IP exposure, Hardware provisioning delays, No measurable improvement, Internal politics/budget
• How constrained is your access to FPGA/emulation hardware today (for proofs or pilots)? Options: Plenty available, Limited but accessible, Very constrained—long lead times, Not available
• Describe any contractual, export-control, or IP rules that would limit how we run tests or access artifacts during evaluation.
• What internal skills gaps could slow migration (e.g., RTL partitioning expertise, scripting, familiarity with new debug flows)? Options: RTL partitioning, Scripting/automation, Emulation runtime ops, Formal property engineering, Debug toolchain familiarity, None
• If the pilot requires hardware provisioning, what lead time and procurement hurdles should we plan for?

Next Steps & Commitment: Can We Make This Low‑Risk and Fast?

• Would a phased pilot with clear acceptance criteria and a rollback clause increase your willingness to proceed? Options: Yes—definitely, Maybe—depends on terms, No, not sufficient
• What is the shortest acceptable pilot duration that could still prove meaningful results? Options: 2 weeks, 1 month, 2–3 months, 3–6 months
• What internal resources can you commit to a pilot (engineer hours/week, access to RTL/testbenches, support for debugging)?
• Are you willing to sign a mutual NDA and provide a sanitized RTL/testbench slice for evaluation? Options: Yes—ready now, Yes—but needs internal approval, Not without heavy restrictions, No
• What would you like to see in a proposed statement of work for the pilot (deliverables, timeline, acceptance tests, pricing model)?

Start Here: Map Your Current Verification Snapshot

• In one sentence, how would you describe your current verification flow and its single biggest shortcoming?
• What is the size and type of the design(s) you most urgently need to cover (e.g., block name, approximate gate count, chip type)?
• Which of these best describes your current stage on the path to sign‑off for the most critical project? Options: Early block-level development, Mid-stage block integration, SoC integration with firmware, Pre-tapeout sign‑off rush
• What are the primary verification flows you run today (pick all that apply)? Options: RTL simulation (UVM/OVM), Hardware emulation/prototyping, Formal verification, Static lint/CDC timing, Software-on-target runs, Post-silicon validation
• How would you summarize the emotional temperature in the verification org right now—calm, tense, panicked, optimistic, or something else? Options: Calm, Tense, Panicked, Optimistic, Mixed/Varies by team

Where Is the Heat Coming From?

• If your last silicon bug were a headline, what would it say—and who or what would it blame?
• How often do bugs that escape pre-silicon verification surface in silicon or tapeout reviews? Options: Multiple times per project, Once per project, Rarely (every few projects), Never in recent history
• When a missed bug is found, where was it most commonly introduced or hidden? Options: Block-level corner case, Integration with firmware, Cross-clock domain issue, Unexpected IP interactions, Toolchain regression gap, Other
• Tell us about a specific failure mode you’ve seen repeat—what made it hard to detect or reproduce?
• How long does it typically take your team to root-cause and implement a fix for those missed bugs once they’re identified? Options: Days, Weeks, A month, Multiple months

Which Tools Are Actually Carrying the Load?

• If you had to defend your current toolset to the CEO, which tool would you be least confident about and why?
• Which vendor tools and internal scripts are part of your core verification toolchain today? Options: Vendor A simulator, Vendor B emulator, Formal tool X, Internal regression harnesses, Coverage aggregation scripts, Third‑party VIP
• How well do these tools integrate (coverage, debug traces, CI) on a scale from 1–5? Options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Which parts of the toolchain create the biggest friction during debugging—long replay times, poor visibility, format mismatches, or something else? Options: Long replay times, Poor visibility/limited waveforms, Multiple incompatible traces, Manual coverage reconciliation, Other
• How often do engineers bypass the official toolchain to create ad-hoc debug flows, and what does that say about the system? Options: Never, Occasionally, Often, Almost always

How Big Is the Testbench Problem (Really)?

• Are you confident your testbench inventory is an engineering asset or a technical debt iceberg waiting to capsize?
• Approximately how many active testbenches (regressions, directed tests, firmware-driven) must be migrated or supported for your critical projects? Options: <100, 100–500, 500–2,000, 2,000–10,000, >10,000
• What languages, simulators, or VIP standards are most common across those testbenches? Options: SystemVerilog/UVM, Verilog/C, C/C++ firmware, Verilator/co-sim, SystemC, Other
• What percentage of your regression runs are flaky, non-deterministic, or require human triage? Options: <5%, 5–15%, 15–30%, 30–60%, >60%
• How would you describe the average end-to-end runtime for your representative block regressions (from launch to usable results)? Options: Minutes, Hours, A day, Multiple days, A week or more

Show Me the Money: Cost of Respin & Missed Coverage

• If your last respin had a headline dollar amount and schedule slip, would you say the cost was a wakeup call or a known risk that you’d silently budgeted for?
• Select the range that best approximates the business impact of your most recent respin (include direct and measurable indirect costs). Options: <$1M, $1M–$5M, $5M–$10M, $10M–$50M, >$50M
• How many engineering calendar months did the last missed-bug recovery add to your schedule? Options: <1 month, 1–2 months, 2–4 months, 4–8 months, >8 months
• Beyond dollars and time, what downstream impacts did the respin cause (customer delay, lost market window, morale hit, contractual penalties)? Options: Customer delay, Lost market window, Contract penalties, Internal morale/productivity drop, Other
• How confident are you in the numbers above—are they tracked, estimated, or anecdotal? Options: Tracked precisely, Estimated from project leads, Rough anecdote, Not tracked

What Failure Modes Keep You Up at Night?

• If you had to name one failure mode that could still blindside your next tapeout, what would it be and why does it persist?
• Which verification stage most often fails to catch the issues that later cost you time—unit/block sim, integration runs, emulation, formal, or post-silicon? Options: Unit/block simulation, Integration simulation, Emulation/prototyping, Formal, Post-silicon
• How frequently do cross-domain/system-level interactions (software+hardware) reveal problems that block-level flows miss? Options: Always, Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never
• When these failure modes occur, how straightforward is it to reproduce the issue in a controlled environment for debug? Options: Easily reproducible, Sometimes reproducible, Hard to reproduce, Not reproducible
• Describe the longest lead-time bottleneck in your failure-to-fix cycle (e.g., getting hardware, reproducing, waiting for logs).

People, Process, and Politics: Who Moves the Needle?

• Who would be the strongest internal advocate for changing verification platforms—and who would be the most likely to block it?
• Which stakeholders must be convinced before a migration begins (select all that apply)? Options: Verification Manager, VP/Head of Engineering, Software/Platform Leads, ASIC/SoC Architect, Test/Validation Leads, Procurement/Finance
• How much runway do you realistically have to prove a new approach before a mandatory tapeout decision? Options: <1 month, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, >6 months
• What kinds of organizational constraints (hiring freezes, budget cycles, security approvals) tend to derail verification initiatives? Options: Hiring freezes, Budget timing, Security/compliance reviews, IP ownership issues, Other
• How do engineers feel about adopting new verification tools—eager, cautiously open, resistant, or actively opposed? Options: Eager, Cautiously open, Resistant, Actively opposed, Mixed

Data & Metrics: What You Measure vs. What You Trust

• How much of your coverage dashboard would you call reliable data versus convenience reporting? Options: Mostly reliable, Somewhat reliable, Mostly convenience, Unreliable
• Which coverage metrics do you currently track as part of sign‑off criteria (choose all that apply)? Options: Line/statement, Toggle/conditional, Functional/scoreboard, Formal property coverage, System/firmware coverage, Custom metrics
• How are coverage and verification results currently consolidated and who owns reconciliation? Options: Automated dashboard (single source), Manual spreadsheet aggregation, Ad-hoc reports per team, No formal consolidation
• Which data sources are hardest to merge right now (simulator logs, emulation traces, formal proofs, firmware traces)? Options: Simulator logs, Emulation traces, Formal outputs, Firmware/trace logs, Coverage databases
• On a scale from 1–5, how actionable are your current metrics in driving day-to-day verification decisions? Options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

What Would a Practical Migration Look Like?

• Imagine a migration that doesn’t eat the next three releases—what’s the one non-negotiable outcome that would justify it?
• What level of testbench migration effort is acceptable to you (per testbench or overall)? Options: Minimal refactor (automated), Moderate engineering hours, Significant rewrite, Only critical tests
• Which types of testbenches are highest priority to migrate first (pick up to three)? Options: Regression suites, Firmware-driven system tests, Low-level directed tests, Stress/soak tests, VIP and interface tests
• What internal resources can you allocate to migration (engineer weeks, CI automation, dedicated project manager)? Options: <2 engineer-weeks, 2–8 engineer-weeks, 2–3 FTE for months, Cross-functional program with PM
• What would you need to see in a proof-of-value run to greenlight a broader migration? Options: Coverage closure improvements, New bug findings, Significant runtime reduction, Seamless debug workflow, All of the above

Risk Map & Quick Wins: Where to Start

• If we could guarantee a single measurable improvement in 30 days, which would restore your confidence fastest—coverage, bug detection, runtime, or debug turnaround? Options: Coverage increase, New bug discovery, Reduced runtime, Faster root-cause debug
• What quick-win experiments do you already think are feasible (e.g., one-block emulation, side-by-side coverage run, formal sweep of critical properties)? Options: Block emulation proof-of-concept, Side-by-side coverage run, Formal property sweep, VIP smoke tests, Other
• Which risks would you want explicit mitigation plans for before starting a pilot (migration cost, performance not scaling, security/compliance, staff ramp)? Options: Migration cost, Performance scaling, Security/compliance, Staff ramp/training, Rollback complexity
• What does a safe rollback or exit look like for you if the pilot fails? Options: Continue incumbent tools with no disruption, Phased rollback of migrated tests, Restore full baseline within X days, Other
• Who should be in the room for a 2‑hour kickoff to validate a high‑priority quick win and sign first steps? Options: Verification lead, Platform/CI engineer, SoC architect, Software lead, Procurement/finance

Quick Snapshot: Where Are We Starting From?

• What is your target date for beginning hardware-backed runs (emulation/FPGA) in this engagement? Options: Within 2 weeks, 2–6 weeks, 6–12 weeks, 3+ months, No target yet
• Which of these best describes the current state of your deployable environment? Options: We have active emulators/FPGAs in-house, We lease cloud FPGA/emulation capacity, We plan to provision hardware as part of the project, We need help choosing hardware
• Who from your team will be our primary contact for day-to-day coordination during pre-deployment?
• Describe any recent attempts (last 12 months) to run full-chip or block-level emulation and what happened.

Who Truly Holds the Keys?

• If we asked today who must sign off on going live with emulation-based flows, how many distinct decision-makers or groups would we need to convince? Options: 1, 2, 3, 4–6, More than 6
• Which roles are likely to block or slow deployment if their concerns aren't addressed? Options: Verification Manager, VP Engineering, Security/IT, Firmware/Software Leads, Silicon/RTL Owners, Procurement/Legal
• What access or approvals typically take the longest to get at your company (e.g., lab access, secure credentials, change windows)? Options: Lab access & rack approvals, Network/VPN access, Secure key/passwords, Change control windows, Licensing approvals, Other
• Tell us about one past deployment decision that stalled — who raised the objection and why?

Is Your Infrastructure Ready — Or Just Comfortable With Risk?

• What’s your current environment footprint for verification (hosts, shared storage, network, lab racks)?
• Which infrastructure gaps would most likely cause a failed or delayed emulation run? Options: Network bandwidth, Shared storage IO, Host machine cores/memory, Rack power/cooling, FPGA chassis availability, Other
• Do you have existing automation for provisioning test environments and deploying images/firmware? If yes, which tools? Options: Yes — CI/CD (Jenkins/GitLab), Yes — in-house scripts, Partially automated, No automation
• How do you currently track environment-related incidents that impact verification runs (and how often do they occur)? Options: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Rarely, We don’t track

Can Your RTL Be Split Without a Day of Shame?

• If RTL partitioning were left as-is, how confident are you that your design can be mapped to available FPGA capacity without functional regressions? Options: Very confident, Somewhat confident, Unsure, Not confident
• Do you have an existing RTL partitioning plan (documents/scripts) for the target blocks or full-chip? Options: Detailed plan exists, High-level plan exists, Ad-hoc decisions only, No plan
• Which constraints matter most for your partitioning (pick all that apply)? Options: Timing constraints, Interface fidelity (buses/AXI/UART), Clock domain crossings, Memory subsystem mapping, Debug visibility, IP licensing/third-party blocks
• Share a recent example where partitioning caused unexpected rework — what happened and how long did remediation take?

FPGA & Emulation: Do You Have Enough Hardware — Or Hopes?

• How many FPGA chassis or emulation systems are realistically available to dedicate to this effort at any given time? Options: None, 1, 2–3, 4–8, 9+
• What is your current policy for allocating hardware to verification vs. other teams (e.g., firmware, bring-up)? Options: Dedicated to verification, Shared by schedule, Priority-based with emergencies, Ad-hoc
• Have you provisioned FPGA images and hardware bring-up checklists before? How reproducible is that process? Options: Highly reproducible, Somewhat reproducible, Manual and error-prone, Never done
• What dependencies do you anticipate for hardware provisioning (rack space, vendor install, network changes, firmware loads)?

Testbench Migration: How Much Is Waiting To Bite?

• Roughly how many unique testbenches and VIP instances would need migration to run on our platform for your representative blocks? Options: <50, 50–200, 200–500, 500–1,000, 1,000+
• Which categories describe most of your testbench backlog? Options: Directed tests, Constrained-random, Firmware-driven, Hardware in the loop, Formal properties, VIP/scoreboards
• Which migration challenges worry you most (pick up to three)? Options: Makefile/build complexity, Debug tool differences, Unsupported DPI/VPI calls, Legacy scripts, Third-party VIP licensing, Test data handling
• How are testbench owners and maintainers organized — single owners per TB, rotating teams, or shared responsibility? Options: Single owner, Small dedicated team, Rotating across teams, Shared loosely
• Estimate the average time to migrate one medium-complexity testbench (hours/days). Options: <8 hours, 8–24 hours, 1–3 days, 3–7 days, 7+ days

Can We Trust Your Data and Coverage Signals?

• How do you currently measure coverage and aggregate results across simulation, formal, and emulation? Options: Unified dashboard, Manual spreadsheets, Separate reports per tool, No formal aggregation
• Are the coverage models and metrics consistent across environments, or do you reconcile different metrics manually? Options: Consistent and automated, Occasional manual reconciliation, Manual reconciliation every release, Metrics incompatible
• Do you have telemetry or logs accessible remotely for post-run analysis (and who owns that access)? Options: Yes — centralized, Yes — scattered across teams, Limited access, No
• What specific coverage or runtime metrics will determine whether a pre-deployment run is successful for you?

Risks, Rollbacks, and Rescue Plans — Are We Prepared?

• What is your go/no-go criterion if an emulation deployment introduces blocking issues to the CI pipeline? Options: Immediate rollback to previous flow, Quarantine and troubleshoot, Continue with mitigations, No formal policy
• What contingency resources exist (extra engineers, contractor budget, vendor support) if we encounter a critical migration blocker? Options: Dedicated emergency team, Contractor pool available, Vendor/partner SLA, None readily available
• When something breaks during a hardware-backed run, what’s the typical mean time to recovery today? Options: <4 hours, 4–24 hours, 1–3 days, 3–7 days, 7+ days
• Describe any corporate constraints (security audits, change freezes, NDA/VIP restrictions) that would limit our ability to run customer suites on hardware.

If We Started Tomorrow, What's Most Likely to Stop Progress?

• Name the single biggest blocker that would halt a pre-deployment run within the first 48 hours.
• Which internal stakeholder would be quickest to push back and why?
• What minimal set of deliverables or confirmations would make your team comfortable to green-light an initial pilot run? Options: Access approved, Hardware provisioned, 2–3 migrated testbenches, Baseline coverage report, Support SLA agreed
• How would you prefer we communicate and escalate issues during the pre-deployment period? Options: Daily standups, Weekly summary + urgent Slack, As-needed emails, Dedicated war-room channel

Commitments and Next Steps — How Do We Make This Safe and Fast?

• Which of these commitments can you make now to accelerate readiness? Options: Dedicated engineers available, Hardware time reserved, Admin/IT approval fast-track, Budget earmarked for contractors, None yet
• What timeline for a pilot run feels realistic to you after these commitments are in place? Options: Within 1 week, 1–2 weeks, 2–4 weeks, 1–3 months, Longer
• Who should be on a 30-minute kickoff to remove blockers and confirm the first pilot scope?
• What would success look like at the end of pre-deployment readiness (be specific — metrics, artifacts, or approvals)?
• Any final concerns, unresolved questions, or hidden constraints you want us to know before we commit to provisioning and migration work?

Quick Grounding: Who and what are we validating?

• Which project, chip/SoC name, and release milestone is this Validation Checklist tied to?
• Which of these roles will be primary participants in the validation experiments? Options: Verification Manager/Lead, RTL Owner, System Firmware Owner, Emulation/FPGA Engineer, Tools/Infrastructure, Quality/Sign-off Manager, Other
• Who will sign off on the acceptance results (name and title)?
• What is your target date (or hard milestone) for completing the validation experiments? Options: Within 2 weeks, 2–4 weeks, 1–2 months, 2–3 months, 3+ months
• What level of detail do you want recorded for each experiment result (summary, raw logs, waveforms, trace capture, full regression artifacts)? Options: Summary only, Summary + logs, Logs + waveforms/traces, Full regression artifacts including testbenches, Other

What if your acceptance criteria are the thing holding the product back?

• Which of these success signals currently matter most to you for acceptance? Options: Coverage closure (%), High/critical bug discovery, Runtime performance (per-test), End-to-end system reproducibility, Debug turnaround time, Migration effort (person-months), Cost per experiment
• What specific numeric targets do you expect for those signals? (For example: coverage target 98%, runtime < X mins/test, find ≥ Y severity-1 bugs)
• How confident are you that your current targets capture the real, system-level risks that caused your previous respin or coverage gap? Options: Very confident, Somewhat confident, Unsure, Not confident
• If we showed you dramatic runtime gains but no change in bug-finding, would you consider that a win? Why or why not?
• Which single acceptance signal would make you feel safe to proceed to tapeout (pick one)? Options: Coverage threshold met, No new critical bugs found, Full-system run-time within margin, Repeatable debug of known issues, Minimal migration effort

Are we testing the parts that actually fail in production?

• Which blocks or subsystems are highest priority for acceptance experiments (list names and why each matters)?
• How representative are your chosen blocks of the biggest verification pain—do they capture full firmware, external I/O, and cross-clock-domain interactions? Options: Fully representative, Mostly representative, Partially representative, Not representative
• What proportion of your total test suite will you run in these experiments? Options: Single targeted tests, 10% of suite, 25% of suite, 50% of suite, Full regression
• Do you have any existing failing tests or intermittent issues we should prioritize reproducing during validation? Please list with frequency and impact.
• Are there any proprietary or restricted tests/benchmarks we cannot execute in our environment? Options: None — all allowable, Some tests restricted (will provide list), Many tests restricted — need special NDA/setup, Unsure, need to check

What if your test environment is tricking you into optimism?

• Where do you currently run these acceptance-style experiments (local sims, cloud, internal emulators, FPGA labs, vendor lab)? Options: Local simulation farm, Internal emulation hardware, FPGA prototyping lab, Cloud-based runners, Vendor/partner lab, Other
• What differences should we expect between our validation environment and your production sign-off environment (firmware versions, peripherals, clocks, power sequencing)?
• Do you require on-site validation runs or are remote sessions (screen-share, recorded runs) acceptable? Options: On-site required, Prefer on-site for some phases, Remote sessions acceptable, Fully remote
• What hardware constraints might block a full-chip emulation run (board access, FPGA capacity, partitioning limits)?
• If we propose synthetic or reduced workloads to exercise corner cases, which are acceptable and which are not? Options: Corner-case simulations allowed, Only full firmware allowed, Mixed approach acceptable, Unsure — need guidance

How will we know the numbers are believable — and who will trust them?

• Which artifacts will convince your sign-off authority (coverage reports, waveforms, reproducible failure scripts, debug session recordings)? Options: Coverage reports, Waveforms/traces, Reproducible testcases, Live debug session recordings, Root-cause write-ups, All of the above
• Do you have a single coverage model and baseline we should merge against, or multiple inconsistent coverage spreadsheets today? Options: Single canonical model, Multiple spreadsheets, No formal coverage baseline, Unsure — need to audit
• Who owns data integrity and auditing for experiment results on your side (name/title)?
• How should we label and timestamp artifacts so they align with your change-control and bug-triage process?
• Which metrics require statistical validation (e.g., flaky failure rates) versus single-run acceptance? Options: Coverage thresholds, Bug occurrence frequency, Runtime averages, Debug time metrics, Everything requires stats, Unsure

What would cause today’s promising demo to fail when you scale to real projects?

• What past scaling surprises have you experienced when moving from block demos to full-chip (partitioning failures, timing issues, peripheral integration, testbench fragility)?
• How many of your testbenches are handwritten vs. generated vs. vendor-VIP, and which category worries you most for migration? Options: Mostly handwritten, Mostly generated, Mostly vendor-VIP, Even mix, Unsure — need to inventory
• Estimate the migration backlog we may need to clear for validation: number of testbenches, VIPs, and regression scripts.
• Which dependencies are brittle today (third-party VIP, closed-source firmware, special license keys) that could stall validation?
• If a validation experiment fails to reproduce a known bug, what investigative steps do you expect our teams to take before declaring the result inconclusive?

Who does what, when — and can we actually meet that?

• Which resources will you commit to hands-on validation (names, roles, estimated hours/week) during the run period?
• Do you have a preferred communication cadence for validation updates (daily stand-up, bi-weekly review, ad-hoc)? Options: Daily stand-up, Twice-weekly sync, Weekly review, Ad-hoc as issues occur, Other
• Which collaboration tools and channels will we use for artifacts and live troubleshooting (Slack, Teams, Jira, shared file server)? Options: Slack, Teams, Jira, Confluence, Shared network drive, Other
• Are there blackout dates or frozen periods (e.g., release sprints, customer demos) where validation runs cannot occur? Options: No blackout, Short windows only, Specific dates (will provide), Multiple frozen periods
• Do we have legal/NDA or IP constraints that require special handling of artifacts produced during validation? Options: No special constraints, NDA in place — standard, NDA with additional IP clauses, Need to negotiate

If we hit our acceptance signals — how do we move forward (and if we don't, what happens)?

• What are acceptable next steps if experiments meet acceptance (pilot deployment, full migration plan, commercial commitment)? Options: Pilot deployment, Full migration, Extended evaluation, Commercial contract negotiation, Other
• What are your defined rollback or exit criteria if validation fails (revert to incumbent flow, pause migration, payment/contract clauses)?
• Who needs to be present for the formal acceptance review meeting, and what artifacts must be ready?
• How will we capture learnings and share them across teams to prevent knowledge loss after validation? Options: Post-mortem document, Recorded demo sessions, Shared wiki with how-tos, Hands-on transfer sessions, All of the above
• If acceptance uncovers actionable bugs, what SLA do you expect for root-cause analysis and fix verification? Options: 48 hours, 1 week, 2 weeks, Depends on severity

Final sanity check: emotional and organizational readiness

• On a scale from 1–5, how eager is your team to adopt a new validation flow that could change existing processes? Options: 1 - Not eager, 2 - Slightly eager, 3 - Neutral, 4 - Somewhat eager, 5 - Very eager
• What biggest fears or political obstacles do you foresee inside your organization if validation reveals significant differences from your incumbent results?
• What would reassure your leadership most after validation: cost savings, fewer respins, faster time-to-debug, or engineering testimonials? Options: Cost savings, Fewer respins, Faster debug, Testimonials/case studies, Other
• If we could guarantee one immediate win from these validation runs, what would you ask for?
• Who should receive the final validation report and executive summary (names and emails)?