Every private spreadsheet is a specification
Somebody wrote it because the system would not. The most honest requirements document in the building.
Field notes
Field notes
Short observations from inside live operations. What tends to be visible on an engagement before anything has been measured. Grouped by what they tend to reveal.
What people build around it
The second system
When a team runs a shadow process beside the official one, the shadow is the specification.
The workaround with a nickname
Once it has a name people say out loud, it is permanent.
Copy and paste is a measurement
Every manual transfer between systems is a missing integration, priced in attention.
Where the paper still lives
Any point work drops back onto paper is a point the digital path could not be trusted.
Where the work waits
Nobody owns the queue
Work waiting without an owner waits until somebody happens to notice it.
Handoff by hope
Work passed with no acknowledgement may or may not have arrived. The sender finds out late.
The approval that is always granted
An approval nobody has ever refused is not a control. It is a delay with a signature.
Look at the oldest open item
Its age is a truer service level than any average being reported.
Where the deadline came from
Trace it back. Frequently not the customer, and frequently nobody still in the room.
Who is actually holding it
The org chart is not the routing map
Nobody escalates up the chart. They escalate to whoever answered last time.
Ask who gets called at night
The undocumented escalation path is the one that works, and it leaves when that person does.
The person who never takes leave
A single point of failure with a pulse. Usually well regarded, usually unaware.
The tool with one power user
A system one person can operate has not been deployed. It has been borrowed.
Count the asking
How often somebody has to ask another person where something is. Nobody owns that number.
What the reporting hides
The meeting that exists to compensate
A recurring meeting whose only agenda is status is a system failing to report on itself.
The status update as product
When reporting on work takes longer than the work, reporting has become the work.
The report nobody opens
Distribution is not consumption. Ask who acted on it last week and watch the pause.
Two numbers, one truth
When finance and operations disagree on the same figure, the reconciliation is the real cost.
The rounding
Where people round before passing figures on, precision stopped mattering. Find out where.
What the work tells you
Watch the first ten minutes
How someone starts the day shows what the system failed to finish yesterday.
The exception that is not rare
If a third of cases are exceptions, the exception is the process.
Ask what they check twice
Anything verified twice is something the system failed to make trustworthy once.
The training request
Usually a system demanding knowledge it should not demand. Training is then a permanent subsidy.
Silence after go-live
No complaints usually means no use.
Recognize any of these?
These are the things that tend to be visible on an engagement before anything has been measured. Recognizing several of them in one operation is usually the point at which the diagnostic is worth running.
How engagements begin