Itni Shakti Humein Dena 'Data'!!

Are our MI Reports making the desired Impact?

 

Most often, post our discussion with our clients and stakeholders we start creating MI reports. Reports depicting performance trends, task volumes, success rates, TAT and a range of other important metrics. We discuss more, and we continue creating new reports and making amendments to the existing reports. We continue generating more reports, for more people, with more frequency to ensure that our stakeholders have all the information that they’ll ever need. However, twist this scenario and think. Thanks to all our enthusiastic reporting and the reams of reports we generate. However, will our stakeholders EVER NEED all this information?

Can we please go back to all our reports in our respective processes and try to look at each of them through the following seven lenses?

1. Is it simple and Relevant?

It’s easy to get overly ambitious and want to provide highly detailed, real-time reports covering each and every slice-and-dice analysis that’ll provide our stakeholders with multiple dimensions. But instead of spending multiple weeks or even months working through our first iteration, take it step-wise. Start with simple and key metrics and then work through several short cycles of prototype, test and adjust.

2.  Is it uncluttered and unambiguous?

Do not clutter your reports with unimportant (though good-looking) graphics. Keep your report simple and impactful in its visual appeal. Resist the temptation to make it too flashy or over-designed graphics and charts. As pretty as those may seem, they get in the way with your report’s objective i.e. rapidly and easily informing your audience.

3.  Is it too entangled and misrepresentative?  

Often reports start simple. And then there are complex formulae’s like percentages, lookups, deriving values from multiple sheets, sum and if conditions, circular errors (where a cell refers to its own value to recalculate a new value) and similar convolutions. It is here that we run a risk of data misrepresentation. When it takes too many sheets and entangled formulae to arrive at a new value, there is always the chance of our final graphs (despite being visually high-impact) showing an inaccurate picture.

For e.g. last month the team occupancy was 80%. Of that 80%, 70% of bandwidth deployed was for Project A. Within this Project A, we used 90% of our bandwidth for activity XYZ. Now, a different chart somewhere might show bandwidth on XYZ is 90%. However, that’s absolutely misleading as the actual bandwidth deployed on activity XYZ is just about 50% (90% of 70% of 80%).

Hence, it is always suggested to frequently go deep into all the formulae and charts in all our existing reports. It is an imperative step to iron out all the inherent chinks that might’ve inadvertently crept in.

4. Is it well structured, designed and formatted?

Take care in how you design your graphs and charts. For example,

·         3D offers no increase in viewer comprehension.

·         Garish colors can interfere with interpretation.

·         Choosing a pie chart for more than 6 values makes the graphic virtually impossible to read.

·         Have we ‘wrapped text’ for long remarks/statements and aligned it well (both horizontally and vertically)?

·         Are we following a standard colour scheme?

·         In case of currencies, have we inserted the right symbol and ‘000 separators?

·         In case of numbers, have we standardized the decimal spaces?

·         Do all the worksheets have appropriate titles?

·         Are all the embedded links and formulae correct and functional?

And finally, beyond the aesthetics, some of the most important questions for all our reports –

5. Can we reduce the frequency?

Not everyone needs every bit of information on a daily basis. Some information doesn’t even add much value on a weekly basis (there are hardly any movements). So should we reconsider the frequencies of our all our existing reports? Can some of them be reduced from dailies to weeklies to bi-weeklies to monthlies?

6. Can we merge two reports?

When two or more reports have a large proportion of exactly similar elements, why then are we wasting our efforts in extracting the same information multiple times? Is there a possibility of merging multiple reports and reducing our redundant efforts?

7. Can we become dispassionate and have a realistic discussion around do we actually need a particular report? What if we stop it completely?

Often we keep doing things, following MI routines and generating age-old reports which are perhaps no longer relevant to anybody. Often, we make innovations and introduce new reports with high-relevance metrics that everyone is keenly looking at. However, we continue to keep running the old reports alongside the new ones, just in case, someone wants to revert to the old format for some comparison trends.

However, there should be a clear-cut, well-defined period of generating such ‘just in case’ old reports. If we keep generating all our old reports alongside the new reports till eternity, the very purpose of introducing innovations is defeated. Till the time all new innovations that are introduced (to bring in efficiencies) do not see any corresponding ‘old practices’ being stopped, the innovations are an additional strain on our systems and resources. It’s an ideal case of building in more redundancies rather than efficiencies.

Hence, time and again, keep questioning all the existing reports for the value and relevance they bring to the table. If you haven’t heard any feedback or questions around a particular report for a long time, perhaps no one is actually looking at it any longer!

And how does one identify such ‘just in case’ redundant reports? Just one approach – keep questioning! Frequently keep challenging and questioning yourself with tough questions around “What if I don’t generate this report?” rather than going over-board with your ‘It will be done!-delighting-the-stakeholder’ attitude.

In the current testing times, deriving efficiencies out of our existing systems, resources and reports plays a much bigger role than ever before. Do your bit. Ask the right questions. And contribute in avoiding the information overload. Cut the flab, get lean!

Itni Shakti humein dena ‘Data’, Kabhi Insights Kamzor ho na!

Let’s explore the Power of Data!

Ever Wondered what your Dil, Still Chahta Hai?

Kai Po Che!: Something Missing Che (6)!

Kai Po Che fails is all about half measures: Here’s analysing what’s Missing Che (6)

Okay, first things first and to give the devil its due – Kai Po Che is a nice, endearing, clean and sweet film in today’s times crassy ‘Murders’, massy ‘Bol Bachchans’ and thrashy ‘Ghaziabads’.

The plot and premise is refreshing (for those who haven’t read the book). And the cast is lively, earnest and effective.

And now, here’s straightaway coming to the Missing Che (6).  Che i.e. 6 Reasons or shortfalls which pull down this ‘good and clean effort’ from being the ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ of this decade. Or perhaps yet another 3 Idiots kinda blockbuster that too was inspired by a Chetan Bhagat bestseller.

What’s Missing Che (6) in Kai Po Che?

1.      For any male-bonding movie, it is essential to establish the camaraderie between its key protagonists before moving on to their conflicts and turmoil. Kai Po Che fails to strike home this chord. Unlike a DCH, which had a collage of magical moments (including the cult road trip to Goa…which is now in the wish-list of every damn alpha male), or even a Rock-On!! which had some heart-tugging camaraderie moments, Kai Po Che never manages to establish this die-hard dosti amidst its lead troika. Yes the tag-line goes ‘Brothers…for life’, but there isn’t much meat to establish this essential feature in the movie. At its core, the relationship between the buddies remains strictly transactional and business-business.

 

2.       The cast is dew-fresh. The director had all the opportunity to flesh-out their characterizations, their finer nuances, dissimilarities and quirks. However, eventually all the characters end up being half-baked. You never truly root for any one of the character or its dilemma, aspirations, victories or defeats. And mind you, this is where the book ‘3 mistakes of my life’ did a fantastic job in establishing all the characters – be it Govind, Ishaan, Omi, Vidya, Bittoo Mama or even Ali. The movie also drops many an interesting characters like the sly and suave Parekhji (imagine this could’ve been a saucy negative role) or even the endearing Govind’s mother.

 

3.      The director chooses to drop-off some of the most interesting and entertaining parts of the book, to possibly make it much tighter and engrossing. However, unfortunately in the bargain, he ends up making this a very grim and dry affair. So here’s the most interesting shortcoming of the movie. While the book was not a really a literary treat, it had great potential for a typical Bollywood romcom with elements like an Australian vacation, some delicate moments of a clandestine romance and an interesting gate-crashing into Team Australia! However, the director chops-off these elements (budget constraints?) and robs the movie of some its possibly delightful moments.

 

4.      Delightful moments? Oh yes, that brings us to another key missing aspect – an imaginative screenplay. Do we know, why, where and how 3 idiots completely changed the game? And elevated the movie much beyond the book? It was in its imaginative screenplay. That’s where an intelligent writer-director like Raju Hirani exhibited his true strengths in tweaking and adding new dimensions to a super-successful book. Hirani added generous doses of humour, an effective voice-over from Madhavan that provided some of the best one-liners in key situations and the enigmatic characterization of Rancho. It is here that Hirani took great liberty in adding newer elements to the movie alongside the core theme of the book. It is here that Abhishek Kapoor fails in Kai Po Che. The movie has zero humour (though there was lots of scope for it) or playing to the gallery moments. There is no smart voice-over. It’s an almost ultra-drab representation of the book.

 

5.      Do we remember the single most important character in last year’s sleeper hit ‘Kahaani’? No, not Vidya Balan or Bob or the cops. The most important character was the city of Kolkata! Kahaani offered a great ringside view of the sights, smells and feel of Kolkata. Delhi was a key character in ‘No one killed Jessica’ or ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’. Mumbai played an equally key character as Bhiku Mahatre in ‘Satya’. Kai Po Che is set in the seductively beautiful city of Ahmedabad or Ambavad (for the locals). But nowhere do we feel the colours or vivacity of this city. As indicated earlier, the visuals in Kai Po Che remain largely monotone, monochromatic, dark and, dare I say, boring!

 

6.      And finally, the most crucial missing link in this entire underwhelming adventure. The music! Three songs in the entire Kai Po Che soundtrack. One (Manjha) that has stuck-on to our minds due to continuous hammering on the tube and two other forgettable numbers (Meethi Boliyan and Shenai). For a movie/book of this canvas, it called for an extravagant soundtrack (more like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam). However, surprisingly, Kai Po Che suffers badly due to the absence of a good, solid, hummable and breezy soundtrack. Last year’s multiple average films like Cocktail, Student of the Year and Khiladi 786 were largely propelled due to their catchy music. Even Abhishek Kapoor’s earlier Rock-On!! had a winning soundtrack. What then compelled him to settle for just three songs and no youth favourites in Kai Po Che will remain a mystery bigger than Robert Vadra’s sudden accumulation of wealth.

To sum it up – while Kai Po Che is finding critical and audience acclaim, it ends up being a sum total of many half measures of what it could’ve been. While it’s debatable whether the movie is better than the book or vice versa (for me, definitely the book was much better), Kai Po Che is sadly not the Dil Chahta Hai revisited I was so keenly waiting for.