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[T500]The Hard Way Soundtrack

by Code47 Fish47, Cod

Writing schedules is all about getting right people working at right time in a minimized expenditure. Though it sounds simple but truly speaking writing schedules is a nightmare. Without the use of the software, the activity needed to gather required information, communicate and implement decisions can turn to be overwhelming to the scheduler.

Employing right people is essential. Right training also needs to be given to the employees. Completing this main task requires managing staff schedule. It becomes the most vital factor in ensuring service standards, controlling labor expenditure and keeping staff satisfied at the company.

Specified hours for the period need to be defined. It becomes important for the managers to plan about the service standards in order to determine how many workers with what skills are needed. What should be taken into account are the known fluctuations like the seasonal variations. A template system helps the schedulers to define the needed hours for about 7 days deferring the selection of actual staff to later stage. For writing schedules individuals need to categorize by what skills they offer.

One common question that is asked is what do you use--decentralized or centralized scheduling system? Do the managers and staff decide who works at what time? Here is the answer for you then. Mostly centralized approach is preferred and thus taken. However, there are many companies where shifts are written on sheet for staff for scrambling to write the names just next to time slot.

With the centralized system also it becomes important to satisfy the employee requirements. The staff scheduling software allows staffs to go through their availability in internet that is used by manual graphical editing environment and automated scheduling system for distributing shifts to employees. This is a type of decentralized approach but however, the scheduler is in complete control. This system enables the scheduler to change the decisions.

Overtime reduction is essential along with use of pool and agency staff. The salaries of staff are the largest cost usually for a company. So, it is very much important to get the correct schedules. Anything done to reduce payroll expense represents an important boost for the business profit. The staff scheduling software allows the managers to rate the staff on the basis of preference order, altering who is first selected by automated scheduling system. This can be used to choose the best workers first. It was designed mainly for the managers to make sure that pool and agency staff and chosen last.

Staff schedules must have a comparison with payroll budgets. The software allows seeing which fields of business are on budget. It also enables to export hours to payroll, taking to account unpaid and paid leave, absence and presence. Tracking and adjusting constant changes to planned schedule can impose manual burden if the functions aren't automated.

On Schedule is a staff scheduling software that gives easy access to schedules and highlights important factors allowing the schedulers to make informed decisions. It takes to account the employee needs along with the corporate and management goals.

Somewhere in the mid 90's, my company, Brook Group, underwent rapid growth as it converted from being an advertising and design firm to a web services firm. We were running 3 shifts at the time and we only had one manager: me. Coming from a design background, I had a lot of (sometimes very difficult) lessons to learn about technology projects and managing folks who make technology products.

I imagined a way for me to post tasks for each employee without knowing HTML, to make managing the late night folks easier. My programmer created it and the lightbulb went on. Wouldn't it be great if we could create a series of these types of widgets to allow any user to post content to the web without knowing HTML? And that is when Tacklebox, my enterprise content management system, was born.

I have survived building 4 versions of Tacklebox, the latest of which was actually launched. I learned these lessons the hard way and I want to share them with anyone tackling that sort of project. Think of this as a fundamental, practical, elementary guide to building a software product.

1. Patience is a Virtue. If you are starting from scratch and you are not well-funded, and you plan on bootstrapping the development effort, realize that patience is a virtue.

2. Know thyself. This means know your limitations. If you don't know how to do software product development and you are bootstrapping and starting from scratch, get people involved who do know how to do software development, product development, project management, product pricing, product marketing... You be the entrepreneur, idea person, but don't try to head everything up yourself you will fail out of the gate.

3. Make Something. Don't go to Venture Capital folks or potential partners with a flip chart and a pitch that sounds something like, "This is going to be really cool"... VCs want to see a working product. And do not go to VCs too early you might lose your chance to get funded because you haven't done your homework.

4. Plan. Plan. Plan. Start the project with a plan. It can have basic elements like what this product is going to fix, what is the business problem, who is the audience, and on several levels, why it will be better than the competition? And yes, you do have competition.

5. Get the Right People involved. Whether you're hiring or looking for a partner, two guys in a garage are not the best choice for building a software product. Sometimes those two guys in a garage dress up good. Maybe they move into an office space and start a company like real grownups. You had better make sure you can identify the difference between a real company and two guys in a garage that just graduated. Ask them if they have business insurance, errors and omissions insurance ask them for Service Level Agreements. Talk to them about CMM levels.

6. Don't use proprietary anything to build your software. You'll be tied to that proprietary code forever, or it will cost you a small fortune to have it removed from your source code.

7. Independents are independent. They will hold you hostage one day. Don't hire independents to build your product. If you hire a team to build your product, focus on hiring "company people."

8. 95% of your success will come from hiring the right and best people, 5% by training people. Don't hire to train, unless you have the best and brightest around to do the training, and a multi-year commitment from those who are getting trained that they will stick around!

9. A caution about partnering. You don't want your intellectual capital sitting in the brain of a contractor. Make sure that whatever you do, you own your source code outright. You need to hire the right people and make sure that their knowledge -- your capital -- stays at home.

10. Always learn from your mistakes. Sometimes we joke about when we are going to stop learning lessons the hard way. Probably never, but make sure you learn each mistake, so you don't repeat it. And just when you think it's safe, new ones will be right around the corner.

Kara Brook is the President and CEO of , a Web site development firm near Washington, DC. Recognizing the need for user-friendly Web site management, she conceived , one of the industry's most exciting new content management systems. More articles by this author can be found at .

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