How Small Scale Software Can Solve Practical Problems

Quality is always important, but in telephony (installing new IP telephone systems) we aim for (and achieve) 100% correct on day one and zero errors in the configuration.

This can be challenging when the existing system may have been around for 30 years and been poorly maintained – this usually means obtaining fresh data from the user community – that’s getting all the names, user IDs, numbers, etc.

The next challenge is in checking this data line by line, possibly several hundred lines, and character by character. It’s tricky to do by eye alone and using formulae in Excel is cumbersome and not a complete solution.

Faced with this scenario again I knew there had to be a better way and created a software application that would carry out the data checks automatically. It checks for common errors like stray punctuation, accented characters, etc. and also cross-checks with Active Directory (AD) to make sure that user IDs match.

I developed this from within the team that would use this and with my own experience of managing telephone projects. Continual review with the team around me meant that the application could be fine-tuned to be easy to use and provide all the features that we needed.

The end result is an application that is quick and easy to use, provides a clear report showing where the errors are and providing output files for convenient upload to the network systems. Not only this, but the application provides a number of outputs and reports – that cover everything the project team need from the data so nothing should need calculating by hand.

It follows from this that it is easy to run and re-run the application while ironing out the issues on any particular project and is also easy to apply to new projects that come along.

This wasn’t a big challenge for me – I’ve been doing this sort of thing most of my life.

Key to this outcome is a small scale development right within the team that would use it – providing a tool that is easy to use and does what the team need it to do.

Does this approach to problem solving sound like something you might find useful in your field? Get in touch and let’s talk and see if I can help.