11.01 Introduction║J•D

2023-06-13 06:03:14

Now we have misplaced management of our knowledge

I imagine that we’re creating extra knowledge than we will handle.

The first output of most employees is data. Day after day we produce extra. That’s our job.

But we’ve completely uncared for the duty of organising, sorting, and managing it.

I’ve not seen a company system within the final decade that was not completely damaged due to the amount of unmanaged data.

Search doesn’t assist

At one level we thought that search would get us out of this mess. However search doesn’t resolve the company data drawback.

File techniques are disparate; the extent of duplication is already too nice; and the cues that Google makes use of to find out what’s helpful — the hyperlinks which might be the material of the web — simply don’t exist at work.

You can seek for issues, however the outcomes are rubbish.

Discover your stuff once more

And so the aim of Johnny.Decimal is straightforward.

It lets you:

discover issues
faster, with
much less stress, and
extra confidence than you possibly can in the present day.

It is possible for you to to seek out the newest and solely model of a factor.

You may be assured that your file system will not be strewn with duplicate variations which might be being independently up to date.

You’ll lastly be in charge of your mission’s knowledge.

It’s time to get organised

There are a few core ideas, they usually’re so easy you’ll marvel why you haven’t considered them earlier than.

It’s value mentioning at this level that all of that is free, and it’s doable to implement it with none extra instruments.

Take all the things it’s good to organise and kind it in to, at most, ten massive buckets.
Be certain that the buckets are unambiguously completely different.
Put a label on every bucket.

This forces you to group issues fairly broadly, however that’s the purpose.

We name these buckets your areas.

An space may be Challenge administration or Documentation.

Undergo every of your new areas and repeat the method.

This creates your classes.

A class inside the Challenge administration space may be Schedule.

A class inside Documentation may be System design.

Now we’ve ten areas which include ten classes every. That’s 100 classes on the very most. It’s impossible you’ll find yourself with 100 classes.

What’s a class? It’s only a assortment of stuff. Challenge schedules. Check plans. Design paperwork. Safety evaluations. Contracts.

Any sort of labor you do can turn into a class.

The purpose is that you simply’ve outlined these classes, every of which is contained inside a broader space. You do that while you arrange your system, which we’ll get to shortly.

We give every class a quantity

Bear in mind they’re grouped in tens, so our first ten classes will probably be numbers 10-19 and they’re going to all be associated to one another.

Let’s say 10-19 is our Challenge administration space.

Class 11 may be Scope, 12 Schedule, and so forth.

A Johnny.Decimal quantity seems to be like this:

42.12 12.03 53.17

They’re brief, memorable, and might be spoken out loud.

They’re at all times two digits, a decimal level, and two extra digits.

Say it like “forty-two twelve” or “twelve dot oh-three”.

Earlier than the decimal: class

The decimal level is there to interrupt the quantity up, however extra importantly to remind you that the quantity earlier than the decimal is the essential half. It’s the class.

The class’s quantity tells you which ones space it’s in. In case your class begins with the digit 1, that’s one thing to do with Challenge administration.

At a look, you recognize what the quantity incorporates. You’ll be astonished at what number of of your class numbers you bear in mind.

After the decimal: ID

The quantity after the decimal is only a counter. We name it the ID: it begins at .01 and will increase with every factor you create.

In these examples, 42.12 is the twelfth factor you’ve saved in your 42 class.

The third factor you’ve saved in your 12 Schedule class may be 12.03 Schedule baseline March 2023.

The ID doesn’t have any relevance to the merchandise itself – bear in mind, it’s only a counter.

Many, many causes.

Organise your recordsdata

The obvious use of Johnny.Decimal is in organising your folder construction.

This can be a folder construction for a generic IT mission. (The reasoning behind the folder naming construction will probably be defined later.)

Discover how we’ve 5 areas, every with a few classes. Not one of the areas or classes overlap. There’s just one place something can ever be.

Even should you weren’t acquainted with this folder construction, you’d be capable of discover your solution to the system design listing.

Standardise!

Cease reinventing the wheel. I exploit the identical 10-19 Challenge administration construction for each mission. I’ve it dedicated to reminiscence. (That is how I can discover my scope assertion in ten seconds.)

This one is modelled on PMP®. Both copy it, or adapt for no matter framework you employ.

Nothing is greater than two clicks away

An essential restriction of the system is that you’re not allowed to create any folders inside a Johnny.Decimal folder.

Because of this you’ll by no means get misplaced in layers upon layers of folders. It additionally makes you create fairly particular folders for every factor, guaranteeing that you would be able to at all times discover what you need.

Inform folks the place issues are

“Hey Kristy, the place can I discover the check case for this element?”
“Forty-one dot twelve.”

Thanks, Kristy.

Repair your e mail

Put the Johnny.Decimal quantity in your email subject and also you’ve immediately categorised all the things. Your colleagues will assume you could have mystical powers since you’ll truly be capable of discover e mail once more.

Show it on printed copies

Reasonably than together with the whole file path on printed documentation, simply add the Johnny.Decimal quantity.

Open recordsdata and folders immediately

As a result of your folders include the Johnny.Decimal quantity, you possibly can open them with out reaching for the mouse.

Mac customers

Press Cmd + Area to deliver up Spotlight. Kind a Johnny.Decimal quantity. Press Return.

(For those who like this type of factor, try Alfred.)

Home windows customers

Hit the Home windows key. Kind a Johnny.Decimal quantity within the Search field. Press Return.

Command-line customers

Tab completion turns into a pleasure when your folders begin with structured, predictable numbers. Or use a small shell script to pop you in to any folder immediately:

~ $ cjd 11.01

11.01 Scope assertion $
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