Category: Special Topics

  • How Will The Solution Impact You Or Your Business

    How Will The Solution Impact You Or Your Business

    The question about the solution impact should be in your mind throughout the planning process. It is an essential part of the “why” of the entire project. There is a reward, benefit, or transformation (or all of the above) you expect from this project. That is measured by the impact it has on you or your business. Therefore, the answer to this question is a factor in the cost-benefit calculations needed to craft a solution that fits you perfectly.

    Solution Impact Is Not Fuzzy, Nor Assumed

    I have found many situations with a fuzzy view of how a solution will benefit the users. General business needs can get rolled into the solution impact and result in a widespread effect. That is a good start. However, we will make decisions based on costs, benefits, timing, resources, and many other aspects. Our choices will not be well-informed if we fail to define the solution impact in detail. For example, “improve our ability to send timely invoices” is too vague. We need to dig deeper into the benefits we expect from that. There are many ways invoices impact our business and customers, and those need to be considered. Here are a few aspects that factor into the value of our solution.

    • Cost of Printing/Mailing
    • Time Required to Generate Invoices (elapsed and resource time)
    • Quality and Detail of Invoices
    • Bulk or Grouped Invoices For Multiple orders

    A good example of solution impact:

    • Lower material cost by 5%
    • Reduce resource time by 10%
    • Cut elapsed time by 5%
    • Allow for reduced errors that drop phone support time by 5%

    Hard Numbers Over General Benefits

    The above example is good because it gives us a solution impact we can place in a formal. We have a total impact number that we can measure against costs. This ability to score our solution is critical during the planning and when we have to make hard decisions like a go/no-go. While it is not all we need, it is an essential piece. It can make tough decisions easy. For example, the solution impact is measured at five hundred dollars when deciding whether to spend another one thousand dollars on the project. That becomes a no-brainer. Early on, this can influence the answers to other key questions and guide us to where our solution needs to complete in terms of time, money, and effort.

    Signing Off On This Question

    This question aims to determine a value for the solution that can be measured against time, effort, and cost. This objective is no different than having a budget in mind for any other purpose. For example, think about buying a car. When you walk on the lot, you will be asked for a budget as part of the sales process. They want to avoid wasting time showing you models below or above your target. Budget is as much a requirement as anything else for a solution. Thus, do not skip over it as you define your ideal solution.

    Improve Software Success

    We have an e-book that can help you explore all the steps in building software, including a few templates. All we ask is that you share an e-mail address so we can send you a copy. We add you to our monthly newsletter, but you can unsubscribe anytime. Your data is not shared with anyone else. Learn more about our book here.

  • Contingency Planning And Disaster Recovery

    Contingency Planning And Disaster Recovery

    There is nothing like a crisis to help us focus on important things like planning. Topics like disaster recovery suddenly become much more interesting. The Coronavirus is all over the news, and this has caused a wide range of reactions. Some of these have included things like cancellations and workers staying home. Unfortunately, all of these can cause your business to be disrupted or even ground to a halt. Granted, this is not an earthquake, flood, or other events that bring down the infrastructure we rely on. However, it is an example of why we need to plan for business continuity and disasters.

    The first step in levels of preparedness is converting staff to remote work. This situation can crop up multiple times a year and without much warning. Some examples are heavy snow or similar weather, hurricanes/tornadoes, and even terror/crime events that cause a lockdown of a building or area.
     

    Common Concerns For Disaster Recovery

    There are many things we take for granted when considering a continuity plan. Thus, those functions are easy to overlook. Here are some typical business functions to consider to help you build out that list of concerns.

    • Communication – Phone and other forms like email. MS Teams or Slack may be the cure for a lot of this.
    • Non-digital communication – Printing and mail. This area can include essential things like invoices and payroll.
    • Customer interaction – Your customers may not be impacted and still need to contact you. Do you have alternate options for face-to-face communication?
    • Line of command – This concern is more about handling outages and errors. When people are not in an office, will you still be able to address and escalate issues adequately?
    • Meetings – We may enjoy skipping these. However, some meetings are critical and must be maintained even in bad times (maybe more so).
    • Online Access – Businesses are doing more to secure their environments. Do you have a plan that allows people to VPN into your network or access resources when not in the office?
    • Grapevine – Do you have a plan for pushing communication out to everyone? This can be internal and external communication. For example, letting staff know the office is closed or canceling public events.
    • Digital Access – Although similar to online access, do your employees have access to the proper version of the files they need? Do your processes include a bias towards saving daily work and placing it where it can be accessed anywhere?
    • Backups and DR – Does your plan include a way for employees to back up and store data when not in the office? Your disaster recovery processes may be oriented towards office staff and network staff.


    Getting Started

    When you look at the above list, there might be some items that cause you discomfort. Your reaction may be to address that right away. The thing about DR and continuity planning is that we do have non-essential items in our daily business. One can ignore these items for planning purposes.

    A good example is payroll processing. When you use an outside vendor, this probably becomes something you push on that vendor. Make sure they have a good plan and that will cover you.

    The Cloud has helped with many of these areas. These challenges disappear as organizations move to MS Azure or Amazon AWS and use more SAAS (software as a service) options. Ok, not completely away. However, you will have a vendor that will provide you with most of what you need for your continuity or DR needs. That is just another value outsourcing can bring.


    Learning More

    There is a wealth of DR information on the web. You can start with a search for “disaster recovery planning” to see a long list of vendors and guides on this subject. I recommend starting with an overview such as this one. You can find examples with excellent backgrounds at places like the Gartner Group, Harvard Business Review, and Forrester. While you can hire consultants to help with your specific plans, I find it much better to go into this process with your eyes open. Of course, you can always send an email to rob@54.197.223.3 if you have questions.

  • The Shortest Path To Solve A Problem

    The Shortest Path To Solve A Problem

    Velocity and speed come in two ways. You can increase power, or you can reduce drag. We can find ways to address both of these aspects to solve a problem faster. Some of these may be obvious. However, I often find many to be overlooked regularly. That may come from rushing through the process or even institutional and cultural limits.

    More Than One Way To Solve A Problem

    Most problems have multiple solutions. Likewise, some are going to be better than others. Therefore, do not let perfect be the enemy of good. The first solution is at least a solution. That is more than you started with. That may be all that is needed. A better solution may be the goal—however, version 1.0 of a solution is better than nothing at all. There is also the option to build on that first solution. When you keep going back to the drawing board, you limit what you start with. Sometimes getting close to a solution provides a foundation or watershed moment. When that happens, you can start the next effort closer to the end. It is like climbing a mountain in stages instead of one herculean effort.

    Remove Drag

    We can start by removing drag on our problem-solving approach. However, let’s first think about what drag is. It is anything that causes friction or otherwise slows down an object or process. That includes things that may take the progress off course. For example, a river may re-route itself if something causes enough drag. Likewise, your GPS may re-route you if there is too much friction in the form of a traffic jam or accident. Now indirect progress may not exactly be a drag, but it works for our purposes.

    The biggest drag I have found in all my years of work to solve a problem (big or small) is misdirection. That may come in the form of going down the wrong path or even solving the wrong problem. The simplest example of this is trial-and-error. Every error (wrong path) slows your speed to a solution. The sooner you get on the right path, the quicker the problem is solved. That brings us to our first key point.

    Ensure You Have The Correct Problem

    That may appear to be an obvious starting point. Nevertheless, it is a common mistake. Humans are known for confusing cause and effect. Likewise, we all have moments of focusing on the wrong aspect of a situation missing the root cause. We sometimes even solve a problem that does not exist. We assume trends where there are none. Start your process by stepping back and examining how the problem arose or manifested. It is easy to get off track and lose a lot of time chasing after requirements that are not needed. When possible, ensure you can reproduce the problem/error. Then, verify the solution actually addresses it.

    A tangent struggle to this is assigning blame. There are many times blae is chased down first. However, that does not solve the problem in most cases. Therefore, work on the problem first, then worry about heads rolling. Reviewing why a problem occurs or occurred can have limited use. Rather than focus on what happened, keep the focus on how to avoid it in the future.

    Fail Fast Fallacy

    The idea of failing fast is popular among some circles. That often is used as a way to remove analysis and push to try things out. Yes, trial-and-error can be useful. However, random is not as good as a focused approach. We have to find a balance between quickly verifying potential options and overthinking their value. We are not going to increase velocity to solve a problem by quickly removing options unless they were valid in the first place. Each successive failure should be methodically moving us toward the solution. Thus, we can think of it as a mortar fire walking in the charges to the target. There will be attempts that take us away from a solution, but that means we go back and try another direction.

    The Single Step

    The is an old saying that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. That is true every step of the way. We can think about a problem and discuss it, and even rehash it. However, we are not going to make progress on a solution until we start work on that. There is a time to think and time to act. Make sure you understand what time it is and you will get to that solution faster. You might even reach it faster than you thought.