Dan Monro

DMONRO, LLC

"Workf low Design"

My definition: The process of examining a specif ic set of tasks, looking for inef f iciencies, and re-imagining a more effective, faster and higher quality workf low.

I am obsessed with ef f iciency. Or rather, IN-ef f iciency. Inef f iciency which can be avoided by ef f ectively communicating well organized information, especially in a collaborative, shared-work environment.

I believe in project documentation. I believe in templates. I believe in guides. I believe in sitting down and discussing pain points, mistakes, delays, resentments, lost time and missing tools. I believe that having those discussions can lead to a more ef f icient and cost-ef f ective process, and, more importantly, a time-saving environment where people thrive and create.

By being able to see the cohesive whole, I can suggest alternatives to an inef f icient process. I can offer ways to format templates or standardize file structure. I can help groups learn to pool information, logically and accessibly, and to create tools that allow them to easily share it with their collaborators. In other words, I can help you save time and money.

Real World Example

When I joined Turner Studios the testing environment was the wild west. When a room was built, or specific software was upgraded, random people went in "when they had time" and tried a few things with whatever media they could get their hands on to see if anything was broken. They would report that to various people in various ways and, eventually, the problem would be addressed - probably. Conversely, there were times when an entire set of suites was upgraded and the problems were not found until 9am Monday morning when 30 or more sessions were down and the engineers were in scramble mode.

I developed a standardized testing project which used the same media every time. The project was broken into parts, with a set methodology to test for correct functionality, rather than searching for problems. This methodology was adjustable depending on what had been built or upgraded.

Over time this project came to encompass our entire software package, from OS to all of our third-party plug-ins, Peripheral hardware and Network-specific workflows. All of the media was consolidated into a portable set of projects that could even go on the road with Sports. My teammates and I also built templates which were automatically used to create projects to ensure settings and preferences were maintained, thereby cutting time spent trouble shooting simple playback errors, etc.

Instead of copious Word documents with lots of screengrabs, I switched to using Adobe Spark, which allowed for an easily customized micro-site that was both more engaging and less labor intensive.

The net results of this re-design were time saved in testing, vetting and trouble-shooting, uniform project structures facilitating sharing, more useful problem tracking information and faster timelines to upgrades.

An Example of my Upgrade Guides

Created using Adobe Spark and Adobe Stock images. Deployed via a webloc icon on every users desktop.