Projects · Work in practice
Five real cases, told straight. Work made simpler.
Each one started the same way: a job was taking far more effort than it should. Here’s what was slow, what we changed, and what it looks like now.
One client story so far, four from my own businesses. Each story says which, and where its figure comes from.
01 Client project · Mon Arbitre
Find a date without the back-and-forth.
- What was slow
- Offices, union representatives and employer representatives agreed on hearing dates by phone and email. It could take weeks, and roughly 6–10 hours a week of assistant time.
- What changed
- Working with a group of grievance arbitrators and mediators, we built a shared availability view, searchable by arbitrator, date, week or region, with standardized requests. About three months from needs analysis to making the tool available.
- The result
- 1–2exchanges per request, instead of calls and emails that could run for weeks.Publishing availability now takes a few minutes every other day, and the office still confirms each date. My estimates, in this case.
We save so much time and back-and-forth that our executive assistants can’t do without Mon Arbitre anymore.
02 · My own business · WP Hammer
More work done. Fewer requests to send.
We thought we needed another person. So we took a closer look at the job: what, exactly, would this person do all day?
Routine work on more than 40 servers (copies, backups, staging sites for testing) kept landing on senior staff. We read 12–18 months of past requests, had a senior server specialist check the procedures, and built WP Hammer. The team now runs those tasks itself.
Read the WP Hammer story
85–90%
of the work we had planned to hire someone for, now covered by the platform.
My estimate. Not hours or cost saved.
03–04 GetTrail and PixelStream
Update once. Let the information travel.
GetTrail started with a question over coffee: why rebuild the same trail status grid every morning? PixelStream came next: panels first built to show those statuses at the trailhead, now fed by other sources too, like a city’s fire-danger level. My company PixelTrail runs both.
What changed
Two of my own products.
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Daily trail update
My own product · GetTrail
Before: roughly 30–45 minutes preparing the daily update, plus handoffs to the webmaster and social media. After: roughly 10–30 seconds updating statuses in GetTrail, depending on network size.
Where these numbers come from
What I observed with the networks using it: the morning grid and its handoffs before, one status update in GetTrail after. Larger networks take longer. My estimates, not a promise for every site. In a client’s own words, Plein Air Sainte-Adèle: about 30 minutes every morning, now under a minute.
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Fire-danger level on the city’s signs
My own product · PixelStream
Before: city staff spent a few hours on the road, several times a week, changing the fire-danger level on signs. After: PixelStream connects the source to the panel, and those routine trips are no longer needed.
Where this comes from
For a municipal customer. The panel checks its source every minute: that is how often it looks, not a promise that every display changes within the minute. My description of this case, not a measurement.
05 Consulting, then my own business · Code Machine
Build the business around work that works.
- What was slow
- About 12 years ago, I consulted for an agency division serving roughly 500–600 small and medium-sized businesses. It was losing money, and more than 30 account managers each kept their own spreadsheets, checklists and Post-its.
- What changed
- We turned the strongest working habits into shared procedures, then built Code Machine around them while my partner and I negotiated to buy the division. That became CodeMountain.
- The result
- 3months, roughly, to turn a profit after the acquisition.My recollection. The procedures, the software, the portfolio review and our decisions all played a part, not the software alone. Code Machine is still in use more than a decade later.
BeforeA system on every deskThe changeShared proceduresNowOne tool around the work
The question it left us with
Is the business struggling to find customers, or is serving them taking far too much work?