Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Before putting your work on a computer, do it by pencil and paper for a year.

I developed this guideline about 20 years ago. I kept seeing people spending lots of money (million$) creating databases and such to help them do their work.  Most of the work was simple, like:

We have several thousand items in this room. People check out items. We need to know where any item is at any time.

• A Solution: put a person at the door with a clipboard, piece of paper, and a pencil. If needed, put a mean dog next to the person.
• Another Solution: spend a million dollars buying a big computer, a database system, and hiring a couple of database programmers.

People chose Another Solution. Go$h.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were spending taxpayers’ dollars.

Aside from wasting money, the result was a system that didn’t help people accomplish their work. They tried the computerized system – for a little while. They stopped using it after a couple of weeks because it didn’t do what they wanted.

They didn’t understand their work. They had not done it long enough to understand it.

So, here is the part where I dispense the sage advice:

• Do your work with a pencil and paper for a year (see Note)
• Tear up the results
• Try it again
• Be frustrated
• Smash your head against the wall
• Now you are ready to speak with a systems analyst who may be able to help you with a computer system that improves your work

Note: Don’t take “a year” literally. Maybe six months, maybe two years, whatever is appropriate.