MediaWiki for Internal Process Control

Every mistake is a lesson in disguise. Recently I’ve noticed:

• My memory, already bad, is getting worse.
• My number of steps in each task is growing, as are the number of tasks.
• My desire to operate flawlessly and keep everyone happy is extremely high.
• My desire to teach someone else how to do every little step of business process is crazy low to non-existent.

These things are in conflict with each other. My solution has been to write down every step of a task that repeats. Now I don’t have to try and hold it all in my head. When I need to do a job, I look it up. If I can’t find it, I create a new list.

…which works fine if there’s two or three lists. I quickly realized I was going to need a LOT more lists. Writing it on paper was crash-proof (yay) and hard to edit (boo). Solution? A MediaWiki set up on the LAN is now going to serve up all the documents office-wide. MediaWiki is the same software used for Wikipedia, so I know it’s been well tested.

I hope with this I’ll be able to refine my process and build a kind of “Choose your own adventure” for new employees.  Need to know how to do something?  Look it up!

The next big challenge will be predicting when I need to order parts so that they arrive just before I run out of that part.  I couldn’t do that before I started ordering and making sales but as the data builds up I should be able to plan ahead very nicely.  I’m not even going to bother looking for an open source solution – to work right it’s got to be completely integrated into my store.  I don’t want to have to copy data back and forth, I just want a notice saying “it’s time to order [number] units more of [part x]”.

Do you have a favorite way to stay organized? Share! It pleases my OCD.