I am not trying to give away anything here. But the organization that I work for is obsessed with collecting data. My estimate is that we spend an average of 30-40% of our time trying find out where we stand.
All operations are geared towards facilitating the data collection process -- how can I tweak my project management so I can get more data about the ..er...project management ? Status reports are prepared and shared quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily...There are whole applications developed internally whose sole purpose is to provide reports and charts --- to slice and dice data in a gazillion ways : how many projects did we complete last week where two or more people were involved where there were two Java developers and 1 DBA ....
And, these dashboard applications are getting more and more complex every day. With every change in leadership, there is a change in the specs on what kind of reports should be built. Every manager has his idea of the ideal report, the ideal chart.
You can only create charts and reports when you have data in the first place. So, off we go. We collect data day and night. There are groups whose sole purpose is to collect data about the projects we do, about our customers, about the revenue we make, about the business we won, about the business we lost, about the number of people who joined the company, about the number of people who left....it is endless.
For every 10 things that an employee does, at least two have to do with the process of either data collection or data reporting.
With so much data being collected, there are obvious compromises on the quality (accuracy and completion) of data being reported --- but that is a whole new story altogether.
But I also noticed one very funny thing. With so much data being collected, you would assume that everything that the company does would be measured. You would assume that the operations would be managed with precision. Atleast to some extent...
But no. I will cite two examples to make my point:
The place where I work has a canteen. Let us say, it can seat 200 people at full capacity. There are atleast 1500 people working in this office. Now, how would you manage this canteen at lunch-time (say 1 PM to 2 PM when most people would have lunch) ? You obviously cannot have everyone having lunch at the same time. And you cannot regulate by asking people on certain floors to have lunch at such and such time. This is typically when your decision suppport system would pitch in and provide an optimization-based solution. You would open up a seperate dining area in the building. You would perhaps consider serving lunch on the terrace. You could consider opening up lunch earlier than usual. You could vary pricing of lunch or availability of dishes so that the traffic is staggered.
The point is: if you had an inkling of which times the canteen is overpacked, you could plan better and provide better services.
The second example is of the company transport. The company provides to and fro conveyance to the employees at pre-scheduled times in the morning and evening. But, I have noticed (with great personal discomfort) that there is no pattern to the number of busses provided for transport. To cite one case, in the evenings there are busses running at hourly intervals from 6 through 9. The operations dept does not have a clue as to how many people take the bus at 6 and how many take the bus at 9. As a result, there have been instances where the bus at 6 is half-filled while the bus at 9 is packed to the hilt.
My aim was not to point fingers at the administration of my own company. I understand that I am part of the problem and I am only ridiculing myself.
The point I am trying to make is: Do we really need to be obsessed about collecting data ? Do we also need to be discriminative about what kind of data to collect ? How do we use that data ? Does it end in charts and reports ? Or does it need to be chanellized into a decision-support system. If data cannot be used to make meaningful decisions, it should not be collected: is that a correct observation ?
Some of the above questions have obvious answers, some do not. There are also organizational obligations (maintaining and earning industry certifications, for example) that drive data collection initiatives and force the organization to go against the grain of logic. But where does this all take us ?
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Hey.. I was having the same doubt that whether the data what we are collecting are of any importance. Or is it something like saving it for rainy days to come!
Actually the truth is no knowledge is bad.. to gain knowledge we need data! The important thing is how we are using the data. All we do is try to generalize the reporting part. Which will not work most of the case. My way of projrct mangement is different from 'X's way which is different from 'Y's way.. hence each one require different information from the data to mange their project efficiently. Typically a project manager should identify what information he requiry to manage and define his own report structure. If there is a clueless Thomas, he can go with the generalized one defined by some 'A' at some 'T' point of time expecting that will work for everyone at all point of time in future!
Tell me one thing, if every project executed is supposed to be unique in its own sense, how come the generalized information / report will hold good for all the project? Is there something missing?
I would suggest collect all possible data required, but each one who want to use the data should have their own 'Robots' which can crawl through those data and get the information they are looking for. This will be the Ideal project management as per me. Obviously someone else will have different view on this!
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