We had an interesting time at dinner last night.
The restaurant was overtaken by diners. Really. On a Thursday night in summer, I’m sure they were not at all prepared to be descended on by hoards of hungry locusts. The food was great, and the discussions really interesting.
The question came up of auto-generating schedules. A fascinating topic.
In the development of our concept of Tasks > Schedules > Projects > Clients progression, we elected to start at the lowest level.
We focused on schedules and tasks that would be managed and maintained because they brought value to the users of the system. The people who actually perform the tasks. The ones who do the work. (that’s what we really want, after all)
Now, because these tasks incent users to update, and auto-update based on user behavior, and the passage of time, the data in the schedules stays real, in real time with out the ‘Big Brother is Watching’ feeling that so many accounting systems bring. That kind of reporting is fundamentally flawed. (humans are notoriously BAD self reporters and self assessors), and the task of reporting consumes a HUGE amount of the precious resource; time.
By the very core nature of production in a creative environment, things change.
The ability to collect change data based on user behavior is critical.
With that, we direct the attention of managers and task workers. We forcast upcoming events and timings. There are never schedules out of date.
The win here is amazing. It sounds so simple. It is so simple. Build real data based on observation; with that, users and managers start to focus on tomorrow rather than yesterday.
With that data in place, real time statistical analysis of performance is possible. And from there it’s possible to create schedule generation based on component lists of projects.
This is going to be FUN!
-Steve
