Question: In one to three sentences, explain why giving the same amount of engineering time to both the package scanner and the damage classifier, without analyzing errors by stage, could waste effort.

Sample answer: Without error analysis by stage, the team cannot tell whether most failures come from the scanner or the classifier, so they may spend a lot of time improving the part that is already doing well. Error analysis by stage shows which component is responsible for more mistakes, allowing the team to focus on the change that will improve the whole system the most.

Key points:

• Equal effort can be wasted on a component that is not the main source of errors
• The team may spend a long time improving the wrong stage
• Error analysis by stage identifies which component contributes more mistakes
• That information helps prioritize the highest-impact fix

Rubric: Full credit notes that effort could be wasted on a component that is not the main problem and that stage-by-stage error analysis identifies the component to prioritize.