Signs it is time to revisit internal tools

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. A few signals that internal tools is due some attention.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• The spreadsheet everyone fears is a specification
• Internal tools rarely need to be beautiful, but they must be reliable

The practical version

Time saved compounds every single week. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

In practice

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about internal tools before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The spreadsheet everyone fears is a specification — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.