How did you buy the last piece of software your team uses every day?

It came with the platform we had already decided to standardise on.

We compared tools that each did one job well, then worked out how they would talk to each other.

We wrote requirements, scored the responses, and the paper trail still exists.

Someone needed it, tried it, it worked, and we kept it.

An order arrives that does not fit the process. What happens to it?

We handle it, and if it happens again we change the process so it stops being an exception.

We deal with it in whichever tool handles that kind of thing best, and reconcile afterwards.

It gets an exception record and an approval before anything is shipped or invoiced.

We do it manually and move on. The customer does not care about our process.

How much process do you actually tolerate?

Enough that anyone can pick up anyone else's work on a Tuesday morning.

Enough to keep the handoffs between teams honest. Inside each team, their own way.

Every step approved and evidenced. I would rather be slow than unable to explain it later.

As little as possible. Process is what we add after something has gone wrong twice.

The budget halves. What do you protect?

One system that everything runs through, even if it does less.

The two specialist tools that do the real work, and the connections between them.

Clean, traceable records. Everything else can wait a year.

The people. They will make almost anything work.

Profile · 5 questions · 2 min

How Do You Actually Run Things?

Five questions on how you really operate, and the shape of system that tends to fit it — with the failure mode that comes attached.

Five questions, about two minutes. It asks how you actually behave rather than what you believe about systems, because the two are frequently different and only the first predicts anything.

It will not tell you which product to buy. Nothing that takes two minutes can, and anyone who says otherwise is selling. What it will do is describe the shape of system that tends to suit the way you operate, and name the specific way that shape usually fails, which is the more useful half.

Question 1 of 5

About 2 minutes

Two reports disagree about the same number. What do you do first?

How Do You Actually Run Things?

A score is a starting point, not an answer

Tell us what came out and what surprised you. We will tell you what we would look at first.

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