Chris Conway
Chief Architect, Quantiv
Watching the Paris Olympics, it was hard not to notice the athletes’ sponsors. Product colours have become more prominent, advert locations are more diverse, and placements are more orchestrated.
But perhaps most remarkable is you can now identify a brand simply from its logo or slogan, thanks to familiarity with the company or organisation.
Just Do IT
One such slogan – Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ – has always had something of an ironic double meaning for people in computing. This tagline can easily become ‘Just Do IT’ (sorry, but it’s an IT blog, not the Fringe!). (Curiously, the idea for Nike’s famous slogan is said to have been sparked by the last words of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, who said “Let’s do it!” to the firing squad before his execution.)
But, as someone with little natural talent for sport, the word ‘just’ often feels anything but simple:
- Just run a marathon in three hours
- Just jump two metres
- Just swim two lengths in a minute
It happens in other uses of the word, too:
- Just pass your exams
- It’s just over that hill
- I was just… (fill in your own activity here)
In all of these, the word ‘just’ seems a trivial addition to the sentence. Yet it almost always disguises a multitude of complexities required to achieve the end result.
When ‘just’ is anything but
The same is true in that IT double entendre, i.e.
- Just decide what you want your IT solution to do
- Just create a tick-list of your system requirements
- Just define how the applications will be used
(And not to mention the business benefits, i.e. ‘just’ define the cost savings, increased productivity, advanced functionality, etc.)
Even companies trying to help with IT fall into the same trap:
- Just document your business processes
- Just build your data model
- Just design your reports
- Just choose a system or systems
However, with the right approach, implementing IT solutions can become if not a ‘just’, then at least a ‘confidently’.
The similarities between athletics – and IT
But just as running a three-hour marathon, jumping two metres or swimming two lengths in a minute doesn’t just happen without the right preparation, so putting an IT system into operation needs work too.
And that work starts with a method: a way to approach achieving the objective.
For athletes, the basic work method will cover practice, nutrition, rest, and equipment. Advanced training, meanwhile, will include many more specific techniques that lead to marginal improvements that make the difference between ‘just’ competing and winning a medal.
IT projects are no different. Knowing where to look for requirements, how to interpret descriptions, and what these mean for implementation, depends not just on skill (or luck), but on an understanding of the problem being solved.
Using the right analysis
This understanding is provided by an analysis method. But in the same way not all training methods are suitable for all disciplines, not all analysis methods are suitable for all purposes. They’re most effective if used in the circumstances for which they were intended.
For example, we’ve designed Quantiv’s NumberWorks method specifically to identify those features of your organisation that are most useful in defining its key activities. This provides vital information about how your organisation works, therefore allowing identification of the critical points at which a good IT solution could help.
What to look for and how to find it
Using NumberWorks doesn’t involve asking open-ended questions and hoping the answers contain something useful for IT solution requirements. Instead, it provides a definition of what to look for and how to find it. It does this by applying a consistent, repeatable set of techniques based on a simple pattern of processes:
- What’s done?
- What’s used?
- What’s produced?
By describing operations in this way, it’s easier to see how earlier activities affect later operations. Equally, the effect of subsequent activities on the state of your organisation can then be seen too, ensuring robust flow control and process adaptation.
In this way, NumberWorks provides a predictable and coherent way to classify, qualify and quantify the values associated with your organisation’s activities. And this makes it easy to collect, expose and use operational information.
And by creating a model of processes, NumberWorks supports identification of operational metrics that will help with decisions about how to monitor and control operations.
Making IT better
In short, NumberWorks provides a way both to decide what your IT system needs to do, and then to monitor how it does it.
When it comes to IT solutions, there’s no Olympics, no heats, no gold medal. Everyone can take part, and with the right method, everyone can win. So perhaps ‘Just Do IT’ isn’t so wrong after all.
To find out more, call us on 0161 927 4000 or email: info@quantiv.com
