News for Wombats: Taming Unreasonable Requirements
I've heard from a couple of friends about some "classic" project
requests - dilemmas they have recently faced. These unreasonable
requests can be turned into something achievable and, potentially, more
relevant / meaningful to the requestor, by approaching the problem from
a different direction.
Request for Data: the Analytics Project
Classic scenario #1 arrives courtesy of the external Experts,
analytic genii (sic) promising to reveal secrets of profitability
and sources of revenue buried deep within our data sets. Their "simple
request" is to pull all data from the system - customers and orders,
vendors and payments, items and inventories - all classified by OBC; the
Obvious and Brilliant Categories that, when summarized and sorted, will
unlock our Big Opportunities.
Pulling data from the system is easy, but the desired attributes
often do not exist in the system - or, they exist, but we have not (to
date) filled in those details on our orders / payments / inventories.
So, IT is asked to coordinate the bursting of data into separate
spreadsheets, and distributing data sets to various areas of the
business, to the people who know how to categorize the uncategorized.
Note the hidden work the
consultants have pushed down. IT must frame the question to the business
(can you categorize this data?), but they are often left with the
task of explaining the original project and justifying this
interruption. Remember, when the programmers came in this morning, this
Data Collection project was not on their radar screen. Of course, this
is perceived as IT resisting, being uncooperative ...
Sound familiar? It should, I've seen it at many companies, many
functional areas of the business. There are some Obvious Truths that
jump out when you think about this for a bit ...
- The Data is not Missing - we just never collected it
before. Truth is, if we were already categorizing data this way, we'd
probably be paying attention to the Big Opportunities already!
- You're Just Moving the Work from the analysts to IT.
True, internal IT will probably know the quickest way to get the most
accurate data, but why push off the communication / explanation stuff?
- There is a Hint of Diminishing Returns here. If 100% of
the data is categorized, a simple pivot table will elegantly show all
the data, totaled by attribute and sorting the Big Targets to the top.
However, most of the time spent is getting the "long tail" of special
cases categorized; wasted work, because they won't make the Pareto cut.
Aha - that last one gives us a hint on how to slash the amount of
work required to get actionable data in a reasonable amount of time.
Haven't the external Experts seen data sets like this a million times?
They are, after all, selling their experience in the problem space - why
not engage in some targeted research? Based on experience, for
companies of our type and size, what do you expect the answer to
be?
What cross
selling opportunities are the most common?
What aggregate buying typically get the most bang for the buck?
Which product families are typically the slow movers?
Jump start the data categorization by guessing the Pareto sort,
and target that data for characterization ...
- Download
100% of the data – must always be able to do a hash total to prove we
have it all
- The
download / work files have blank columns for every requested attribute
- Scan through and mark all the data for the target category
Battling What "They" Say
A similar problem is often faced when proposing
system and process change. A classic refuge of the change resistant is
to stand behind an Unassailable Truism with a potential for problems ...
Not all of
Our Vendors are ready for EDI ...
A great idea - but how will this impact The Customer?
You can't apply these changes to All Products ...
Well, yes, but this isn't helping us get to the benefits represented by
this Cool New Thing; you are just defining Problems, not Solutions.
Still, this one can be fairly easy to defeat, by getting a bit more
specific.
Which
vendors / customers / products are we talking about? Usually, there are
just a few key instances where critical relationships (vendor or
customer) must be maintained, or important product attributes will guide
decisions / changes. Target these specifics, and don't try to develop
solutions / rule sets that will work in all imaginable cases
(diminishing returns, again).
News for Wombats
The phrase comes from an old
Monty Python
show, where a series of terribly redundant news programs, specific to
parrots, gibbons, and wombats, pointed out that in all cases, "no
parrots / gibbons / wombats were involved". (
Hey - it's funny in context. Not everybody appreciates Fibber
McGee, either
). The point is - when time is of the essence, and you are looking to
balance a complete design with relevant action, it helps to focus on the
specifics.