The "Midnight" Use Case of SPOF Solutions

Recently I published an eBook, detailing a 21 step solution program, for Single Points of Failure (SPOF) on what I call “information worker” teams. A Single Point of Failure on a work team, is a situation where only one person has effective knowledge of how to complete a task or business process. Absent this person, the team would be hard pressed to seamlessly backfill for this task, or in many situations, even be able to effectively complete the task, with reasonable timeliness and accuracy.

Specifically, these are teams where workers process information on a computer screen. While my experience in mainly in Accounting and Finance – so this can include everything from daily flash reports, month end cost accounting closing procedures, account reconciliations, ad hoc reporting, etc -- this can be applied to many other functional areas as well. HR teams processing payroll. Treasury teams performing cash management functions. Engineering teams doing compliance reporting in ERP systems. Maintenance teams managing tickets. Paralegals doing research. Small businesses operating out of Quick Books.

While I’ve worked through 5 distinct “use cases” with teams over the years, the most prevalent, and the one posing the greatest risk to the client, is what I call “Midnight”.

In this use case, an experienced staffer, is leaving the company, and the clock is ticking. Often this is on fairly traditional short notice – 2 to 4 weeks. Many times, the period will NOT overlap a key timetable – for example, a staffer resigning mid month, and will be gone by the time certain month-end processes need to be run. And, often times, after efforts to retain the staffer are exhausted, a good portion of the notice period has been consumed. So there may remain as little as a day to a week, to extract as much specific knowledge as possible.

Teams often, with good intentions, delude themselves into thinking their documentation is up to date, and ready to go. I’ve seen situations where “we updated all that 2 years ago—it’s in good shape”. However, nobody has dusted off or walked through those procedures since then. Processes have been changed, or dropped. Screens can change on the software, both the “UI” (User Interface), and “UX” (User experience). Menus change. Features get added and dropped in various “point” software updates.

As a result, there can be a LOT of surprises during these “late in the game” walkthroughs. I’ve heard a lot of “oh yeah, that changed”, or “hmmm, we do that differently now”, when stepping through the documentation during a transition. Plus, these changes are often being stepped through in a “practice mode”, instead of live production, since certain tasks are only done live once a month, or less frequently.

A solution I’ve developed with clients over the years, is to record the subject matter expert (SME), often the one who is leaving, using an online meeting tool, with screen sharing and recording capabilities. This captures the current view of the software, menu navigations, criteria selections, data transformations, and dozens of the small nuanced screen movements that an experienced incumbent does habitually and naturally.

These small things often go unmentioned, but can create larger snags in transition, when the new person is doing them on their own, in real life, after the SME has left. Best case scenario, this simply chews up time. Worse case scenario, it compromises data accuracy and reporting integrity.

Plus, by using video, this has the benefit, of accommodating a broad range of learning styles and preferences. Some of us do better by seeing things demonstrated. Some of us record and encode knowledge better by listening. And some by actually doing hands on, being talked through the process. By recording processes for posterity, it can radically enhance the learning and mastery experience for both new specialists, and those “helping out” in transition.

If a business process is done on a computer screen, and that screen can be captured via Zoom, Teams, or WebEx, it’s one of dozens of candidates well suited for this solution.

If you’d like to learn more, feel free to schedule a brief chat and demo via:

https://calendly.com/langleycfo