The Analysis of Workflow Analysis? 24
ziploclogic asks: "Much of my days are taken up performing workflow analysis for courts. For the past few years I have worked for a company implementing their off-the-shelf Integrated Court Management system. While our products are among the best in the industry, I find it difficult to keep my analysis notes organized. The judicial process can vary greatly from state to state as well as from county to county. As to be expected, not one court has been a 100% match to our software. This leads to hours of spec writing for programming changes that must be derived from my notes. Keeping my information organized so that I can prepare said specifications and training plans prove to be a nightmare at times. I have tried one solution that seems to work well for my humble web design company where I send myself gMails with specific keywords in the subject line. This provides for sorting and [later] message retrieval. However, I can leave a court with notebooks [plural] full of workflow analysis notes that I have to decipher in the evenings. I would be interested to learn how others keep their analysis notes organized, especially when working with multiple clients and with multiple [individuals] departments within those clients. Thanks!"
An outliner can be your friend (Score:2, Informative)
I find that keeping outlines really helps. If I am using my TiBook then this is usually done in OmniOutliner [omnigroup.com], though I'm not averse to using Outline Mode in Emacs if I need to share these with others not using Mac OS X. For me being able to categorize my ideas in a hierarchical manner is a Good Thing. In times long gone I used to use Symantec's "MORE II", then UserLand's Frontier... outlines have been a consistent part of my design process.
You can also find good outliners for Palmtops as well, though it h
I hate to be obvious, but it has to be said. (Score:3, Interesting)
Take notes using your computer and save them into the appropriate folder. That eliminates the "scrawl" problem.
If you're going to visit the court many times, include the date in your file name.
If you have the need to do a lot of diagrams, this is one instance where a tablet PC or equivalent might be useful. I normally don't like them, but I'm the type of guy who can't read what he's scribbled five minutes after doing the scribbling.
Hope that helps.
D
Re:I hate to be obvious, but it has to be said. (Score:1)
So, I've reverted to pad and paper.
Long story made short:
One court wanted to go paperless
What I thought was a good solution was, "...an insulting presumption." Judges and
Re:I hate to be obvious, but it has to be said. (Score:2)
Having said that, here's my idea:
1. Create a "blue dots" grid page with an inkjet printer- print out several hundred of these.
2. At the top of each page- connect the dots with BLACK ink to form a date-time stamp. Write your notes in block printing in black, something that an OCR will recognize, using the blue dots as a guide.
3. Ship your notes to some low-paid college co-op at the home office for scann
Not sure if this will help, just some ideas. (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously there are a few desktop search tools available to use for keeping track of this information.
If you are using Oo.o instead of MSOfice, you should find the same capabilities for saving meta information.
Another option is to set up a 'keyword' field within documents that you are creating in ordinary text editors. Or set up a template that you use for each applicaiton with fields specifically for various meta information.
Some others will point out that you should be using some xml to keep track of this. No argument, just haven't used it so can't advocate it.
You may also want to create an index.html file in each directory you keep specific customer files in, where you document the keywords that are appropriate for that customer. Obviously those keywords should appear somewhere in the content files for those customers as well, otherwise it will be of little help.
I believe that Google sells an Intranet server that you can use to index your internal documents and internal users only would have access to those documents.
I am reasonably sure that there are other search tools available, WAIS, plugins for ZOPE, etc. that may help you as well.
The worst part of keeping track of documents is that somewhere along the line someone is going to forget about updating the kewords in a file as it is copied into a new directory for a different customer. For some time after that, the indexes will bring up the wrong file with a keyword search. This will ultimately be fixed when someone finds that file while looking for something else, and realizes what needs to be fixed, and corrects it for you. Then you have to wait for the document to be re-indexed. Versioning will probably create a few problems with that as well.
Good luck.
-Rusty
tablet pc and onenote (Score:2)
I use Treepad (Score:4, Interesting)
You make a tree in the left-hand pane to orgranize the contents in the right-hand pane. The contents can be text you type or paste in, links to files, links to other nodes in the tree, Web links, etc.
The contents are also searchable so you can find things that cut across the hierarchy you've created. To make your notes available to others, there is a free viewer you can give to people, or you can also export to a website. The exported website includes a javascript tree so it can be navigated the same as the program.
There is s free version for both Windows and Linux that may do everything you need. I use the 'Business' edition that has more features and was less than $50.
What about a notebook and a case system? (Score:2)
Are you an educated analyst? I wonder how you do your analysis? I mean, you only make "verbal notes" in "text files"?
What about doing activity diagrams (or flowcharts)? With every activity having an entry condition (precondition in UML) and a goal/result (postcondition in UML)?
You would use a CASE system for that like "Enterprise Architect" (googel for it, its about $200 and beats tools like Rational Rose by far). Depending
Re:What about a notebook and a case system? (Score:4, Interesting)
- go to client site
- lern workflow, take notes on it
- at end of day, go back to hotel and push things into a format for developers (which may or may be CASE/ UML)
The OP, I think, is really asking something along the lines of "I get tons of info thrown at me by non technical people and need to feed it into some other system to make my programmers happy. Who knows a way of accepting tons of semi-structured, possibly random, and always interrelated data so it can be rearragned and cut up into bite size pieces for some other formalized system without making my eyes bleed?"
I think the two best suggestions here have been:
- Wiki (perhaps not only for you, but for the end client as well, so they can see exactly what you're taking back to your programmers and fix mistakes and add details before it goes out)
- Treenode.. never heard of it, but sounds useful.
One thing that has not come up yet is what you do with your client before you show up at their site. If you're getting *that* much info per-client I betcha that you could come up with a standardized set of questions for them to answer before you even step on a plane. That should reduce your onsite workload and allow you to better grasp their workflow while onsite.
Maybe you already do this...
Re:What about a notebook and a case system? (Score:1)
Re:What about a notebook and a case system? (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't develop preconditions, use CASE tools, or define formal workflows in those sessions; you do that after days or weeks of asking questios, accumulating data, and making vague sketches on whiteboards. Before you can do a brilliant analysis, you've got to know something to be brilliant about.
Now, having disposed of that, I'd say that you may not be running into a computer tools problem as much as you're running into an intellectual tools problem. Personally, I find the linear notes on a page model to be badly bandwidth-limited; for that kind of analysis, I like to use a big drawing pad (like this one [staples.com], except Office Max sells one with half-inch quadrille I like better, but it's not on their web site for some reason) and many colors of pen and highlighter.
I use them to accumulate a series of "mind maps" (see http://www.google.com/search?complete=1&hl=en&q=m
Label each page on a consistent edge with date and time in a consistent format; AFTER the session is done, write some keywords on an orthogonal edge of the paper to remind yourself what the session told you.
Re:What about a notebook and a case system? (Score:2)
So I should not have dare to ask wether he is an educated analyst
so this post is rather insightful: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132992&ci d =11126196 because he "translated" my wondering by reformulating the original question. Which makes sense (to me) now.
While your post is rather insulting.
Yes, I'm likely as old as you and do business in computer sciense since far over 20 years. So your 100% certainty failed you.
And yes: I come with a CASE system to my customer when I ask
Instiki (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Instiki (Score:2)
Similar to instiki but based on java and not ruby (might be a difference in installing).
angel'o'sphere
"The Analysis of Workflow Analysis" (Score:2)
Not as bad as you think? (Score:2)
Re:Not as bad as you think? (Score:1)
Wiki! (Score:2)
Workflow Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
We ended up writing our own tool. (Laugh now) None of the managers were interested; none of the programmers were interested even tho the project promised to handle a lot of routine paperwork automatically.
This was ten years ago. Are contemporary workflow tools any better?
Regards,
Bill
I would help, but.... (Score:2)
Therefore, I think I need to ask the question: how do we analyze our analysis of workflow analysis?