I often walk into a company whom are experiencing issues with the flow of their business processes from product realisation through to delivery. My task is to develop database solutions to automate and solve the problematic processes, which are usually invariably administratively intensive in their current state. There is an approach to this end to enable to me listen, develop and deliver a solution, which follows something like this.

  • Understand the service / product – (and make lots of notes)
  • Realistation of the processes to produce effective service / product – (take lots of notes)
  • Identify the processes that are inefficient – (make further notes)
  • Discuss with the client the potential solutions including pro’s and con’s of such a solution – (and write down as a list)
  • Re-affirm my understanding of the business and the issues with the client – (adjust any notes where I wasn’t quite on the same hymn sheet)
  • Go away and digest the overall operations and the solutions that are available and how they can be implemented into the clients business seamlessly
  • Formulate and provide proposal

Its easy for some developers to ask the client to spec something and then clinically produce the work according spec with no room for flexibility. I guarantee if I ask you what you wanted as part of a house build that I was constructing for you, you would miss something out, which would later cause you concern when it wasn’t include because it wasn’t specified.

There is no long term value here and the approach should be one of such and allow for reasonable edits before the solution is finally delivered / rolled out to the client.