We are looking to hire a technology developer and I haven’t come up with a 20 minute solution to that.
That’s not really failing to produce a good outcome, more an example of how the 20 minute approach doesn’t apply to every task or challenge, but I find it usually helps in some way when thinking through how to approach bigger tasks or projects.
Another example is how we have approached managing the post-distribution monitoring reports that come in from Uganda following our 2017 distribution of 12.8 million nets.
130 PDM reports are received every 6 months and we thought about how we could manage the whole process of receiving 130 reports, analysing them all and deciding on required actions in just 20 minutes i.e. 20 minutes of effort required every six months.
At the time, PDM reports from other countries, involving fewer PDMs, came in via email in Word docs or pdfs and they required a lot of time to sort, file and review.
Our ‘20 minute approach’ led to us developing a system that allowed online reporting from the field.
This took the number of reporting emails received to zero and eliminated any need to process documents. It meant data could be aggregated and presented instantly for review and analysis.
A second phase of development took any text entries entered by each of the 130 reportees in the field (responses to questions like ‘What went well?’ and ‘What went less well?’) and distilled the myriad answers into drop down menu choices. This made the next round of reporting easier and quicker for those submitting reports. It also meant we could instantly see qualitative results in quantitative form and better and more quickly analyse them.
The result is we have dramatically reduced the time taken to manage this reporting and improved the speed with which we can make decisions and act if needed.
We are looking to hire a technology developer and I haven’t come up with a 20 minute solution to that.
That’s not really failing to produce a good outcome, more an example of how the 20 minute approach doesn’t apply to every task or challenge, but I find it usually helps in some way when thinking through how to approach bigger tasks or projects.
Another example is how we have approached managing the post-distribution monitoring reports that come in from Uganda following our 2017 distribution of 12.8 million nets.
130 PDM reports are received every 6 months and we thought about how we could manage the whole process of receiving 130 reports, analysing them all and deciding on required actions in just 20 minutes i.e. 20 minutes of effort required every six months.
At the time, PDM reports from other countries, involving fewer PDMs, came in via email in Word docs or pdfs and they required a lot of time to sort, file and review.
Our ‘20 minute approach’ led to us developing a system that allowed online reporting from the field.
This took the number of reporting emails received to zero and eliminated any need to process documents. It meant data could be aggregated and presented instantly for review and analysis.
A second phase of development took any text entries entered by each of the 130 reportees in the field (responses to questions like ‘What went well?’ and ‘What went less well?’) and distilled the myriad answers into drop down menu choices. This made the next round of reporting easier and quicker for those submitting reports. It also meant we could instantly see qualitative results in quantitative form and better and more quickly analyse them.
The result is we have dramatically reduced the time taken to manage this reporting and improved the speed with which we can make decisions and act if needed.