Notes tagged
how-we-work
14 notes on how-we-work. All notes.
Who owns the lead
An enquiry with no named owner is not a lead. The assignment rules have to be written before the first dispute, because moving a lead moves money.
The demo is not the product
A demo is a rehearsed path through clean data. Bring your ugliest challan, ask for the keyboard, and insist on a dated written list of what was promised.
A pilot that tells you something
Most trials are run by the enthusiast, on the best site, with the vendor typing. Design one whose outcome is informative rather than political.
Approval chains worth asking about
Every vendor can draw a workflow diagram. The questions that separate a real approval system from a picture are about the cases nobody draws.
The complaint names the wrong thing
One link was reported broken twice in a single day. Nothing was ever wrong with that link. Two unrelated faults were eating clicks and looked identical.
Written, and never wired
The code to undo a wrong stock entry already existed and had no callers. Nobody had asked for the button, because a workaround was already doing the job.
How we find our own problems
Nothing here starts with a market report — it starts with hitting the same wall for the tenth time. Notice, build, keep alive, and why stage three decides it.
Why tasks stall between people
Work rarely stops because somebody refused. It stops in the handover, where one person has finished and the next has not been told they are now waiting on.
What makes a handover fail
A handover fails when knowledge that lived in one person's head was never written down, and nobody discovers which knowledge that was until it is needed.
Escalation without shame
Most escalation systems require somebody to name a colleague. That is why they go unused, and why problems reach management only after they are unfixable.
Work slips before it is late
By the time a task is overdue, the decision that made it late was taken weeks earlier. The signals were all present and none of them were being counted.
The machine proposes, a person decides
An automatic link that turns out wrong is not just an error. It is an error that looks like a record, and nobody reading it later can tell nothing was agreed.
An import you cannot reverse is an import you should not run
Bringing history into a live system is a one-way door unless you build the way back first. Two properties make it safe, and both are cheap before the write.
A test that describes the code will defend a bug
A regression test anchored on how the code works, rather than on the rule it is meant to enforce, will guard a defect as loyally as a feature — and report green.