Interview Three Lessons Summary

Well, in many ways it seems that your job might be done. Your interview with Wally seems to have given you a solution that someone else already used. While Wally didn't rave about it he did seem to have some good things to say. All in all the Excel file approach has some of the same features that you heard about in your Tim and Aunt Polly interviews: For example you are not required to have any special formatting of the information to enter it into whatever you are using as your storage option. So, as previously mentioned if you want to add something that wasn't captured before, like an e-mail address, then you can just do it without having to rebuild all of your other records nor do you have to do any special reconfigurations to enter that information. Because Excel and Excel-like applications that are found in most office environments and the usage of this software shouldn't require much of any overhead or impact to the CIO office. You are tied to having to access the information through the computer (unless you follow Ron's example and make sure that the information is printable so it can be stored in a folder or binder.) But if you either put the files in a shared computer space (like a shared directory) or if you gave everyone a copy of the files that they can access from their computers then the fact that you have to access the information through the computer shouldn't be too much of a hindrance.

As Wally mentioned you have multiple ways of storing the information in the files: you can put the information in individual files for each company, or you can group the information in groupings that make since for your office (like video, animals, models, etc) and put the information in multiple tabs in the appropriate file. Or you could even put all of the information in one file and let the person use the Find function to search through to find whatever they are looking for by any word that makes since to them to identify the information they want.

If you put the file(s) in a shared area then it would be a good process to make sure that the information is backed-up. It would be easy for an accident or even a disgruntled employee to erase or damage the information in the shared area. The backup or protection plan that is implemented should be coordinated with the CIO office. It is likely that they might be able to help or they might have some lessons-learned from others who require files that are in a shared area.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Wally. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.

Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.