Prototype To Production: My D&D Parsinator

Using the classic STAR format for this one and enjoying the format as an experience telling mechanism.

Prototyping is where possibility meets practicality, and it's been a cornerstone of my work as an analyst and database developer. In many ways, a prototype isn’t just a draft, it’s a promise. It whispers or perhaps a shout, "here is what is possible!"

Additionally, prototypes can quietly evolve into production tools, turning insight into impact faster than traditional methods ever could. They’re the bridge from vision to execution, often becoming the first step toward a fully realized solution.

Here is a story where we built a proof-of-concept prototype but somewhere along the line we forgot that it was a POC and went straight into a production solution.

SITUATION: When I joined Wizards of the Coast in March 2010, I stepped into a world brimming with creativity and passion—a place where stories came to life and imagination knew no bounds. But, like many organizations with big ideas, there were also a few inefficiencies that needed some attention. I came on as a contractor, with a clear goal: to fix bugs and support an extensive FileMaker system that was central to how the organization operated.

My first assignment was with a team working on something remarkable: bringing the rich, imaginative content of Dungeons & Dragons from traditional books and magazines into the digital age with the D&D Insider product. But here’s the thing, the process they had in place to get there? Let’s just say it wasn’t keeping up with the ambition of the mission.

The system relied on one dedicated individual, painstakingly copying and pasting text from PDFs into dozens of fields in a FileMaker database. From there, the system reformatted the content for the subscription site. It was slow, manual, and inefficient. And a few weeks into my role, that individual came to me and asked a simple, yet profound question: “Is there something we can do to make this easier?”

Now, that wasn’t just a question about a process, it was a question about progress. About doing better, about finding a smarter way forward. And when someone asks you if there’s a way to do better, you don’t hesitate. You say, “Yes, let’s figure this out.”

So that’s what we did. Together, we took a hard look at how things worked and set out not just to fix what was broken but to reimagine the entire process. To make it faster, more efficient, and, most importantly, meaningful for the people doing the work. Because that’s what leadership is all about, it’s about seeing challenges as opportunities and building a future that works better for everyone.

TASK: When we sat down for a few one-on-one conversations, I wanted to do more than just understand the mechanics of his work—I wanted to appreciate the sheer effort that went into it. Take something as seemingly simple as an Ape Temple Guardian. Each monster like that required entering up to 30 attributes, along with creating related records for traits and actions. Altogether, that could mean over 100 individual copy-paste tasks for a single entry. Now imagine a book like the Monster Manual 3, with 300 monsters. That’s 30,000 repetitive actions—an enormous amount of time, focus, and patience.

Let me be clear: this wasn’t just monotonous work. It was a testament to this individual’s grit, determination, and skill. He approached me hoping for some incremental fixes, a way to make the process just a bit smoother. But as I listened, I saw something bigger. I saw a chance not just to patch the system but to rewrite the playbook entirely. To rethink the entire process. Because true progress doesn’t come from settling for small adjustments. It comes from honoring the effort people put in while working to make that work more efficient, more impactful, and ultimately, more meaningful. That’s the kind of progress we need—not just fixing what’s broken but daring to imagine what’s possible.

ACTION: My goal was clear: to develop a prototype that could take the weight of this repetitive work off his shoulders through automation. The concept was straightforward—create a system where entire blocks of content could be copied at once, with the required fields automatically populated with the correct data. But we didn’t stop there. Accuracy matters, and so the design included a review process, allowing any errors to be caught and corrected before moving forward.

The system worked step by step, using a series of carefully crafted scripts to analyze and process each line of data through multiple passes. This wasn’t about cutting corners; it was about creating something smarter, something reliable. It was about making sure the work wasn’t just easier, but better—because when we strive for excellence, even in the smallest details, we create a foundation for something greater. That’s how progress is made—not just through the tools we build, but through the vision we bring to the work itself.

It ended up looking something like this ?

RESULT: The results? Game-changing. What used to take weeks was now wrapped up in just a few days. The manual workload was slashed from over 30,000 steps to fewer than 1,000. By rethinking the process, we unlocked both speed and accuracy, making the work far more manageable and rewarding. This wasn’t just about efficiency, it was about empowerment, about showing that with the right tools and approach, we can achieve more than we thought possible.

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