And welcome to Tuesday Tip and Tuesday Tech.

It's day nine of my ten day going live challenge and it's much later than usual.

It's just been a busy day.

I hope you're having a magnificent day.

And if you don't know who I am, I'm Heather Masters.

I'm a business coach at Techie and also a life and happiness coach.

Today I wanted to us some tech because it is something that I've seen with a couple of clients that I'm working with at the moment that they want to invest in software to help their business and automations but they haven't taken the time to plan out specifically what they're looking for.

And it's easy then to be disappointed and have invested heavily in software without realizing what you actually really wanted it to do.

And that one that you've chosen may not be a fit.

So today I want to cover that, but I also want to work with it in the analogy of life as well.

How often do the big projects end up having the less preparation?

For instance, buying a house, how often, you know, it's a big life decision.

We might only buy a house once every 20 or so years.

And how much effort do we put into planning what we want right down to the bedrooms, bathrooms, sinks and really working out what's important to us.

You know, we've covered values and it's really useful when you're working on a big project.

Maybe you're looking to go on a holiday of a lifetime and you do all the intellectual planning but you haven't really checked in with your values of what would make this the best thing ever and also what would what other things you really don't want.

Sometimes we overlook what we don't want and we don't check that those don't wants aren't there, if that makes sense.

So for instance, we can want to go in a villa by the sea, but we maybe haven't checked that.

There's a huge group of hotels right next door and it's, it's not quite as quiet as we'd anticipated.

So there's of that sort of thing that we, we need to look at.

But let's dive in and go into some of the nitty gritty.

The first thing as I say, is to get clear objectives.

And this is whether you're looking at a technical project or whether you're looking at a wedding planning, a holiday planning, your kids next school, whatever it is, what are you trying to achieve?

That's the first thing to really yourself and what are the problems that you're solving?

And how will you know when you've got the results that you want?

How will your success be measured?

Keeping clear objectives helps everyone stay aligned and focused on the end result, on the end goal that you actually want.

So, for instance, if there are five of you going on holiday, checking in with each of you to find out exactly what would make the difference for that holiday to be amazing.

And, you know, trying to tick as many boxes as possible, sometimes it's not always to tick, ever able to tick every box, but as many as possible.

And this is also good for teamwork as well.

If you've got a team working on a project, really understanding, again, from a values perspective what's important to them, that they will feel that they've succeeded on the project.

And it's not always money, you know, at work we tend to think it, it's always income driven, but that's not necessarily true.

So someone might just want a little bit more empowerment, you know, a little bit more freedom to make decisions within the project.

And you could probably negotiate that and include them in different ways and probably uncover a different skill as well.

So gather the requirements, talk to everyone, work out what's important, conduct surveys or interviews if it's a project or even if it's your kids, sit them down one at a time.

Because sometimes if you're talking around the family table, they might not be willing to say what they really want and write it down, document it all.

And the main thing is to keep it all simple, get that plan in place, but as simple as possible.

Whether it's checklists, whether it's diagrams, whether it's a board for your family so that you know that you're achieving each goal and you're ticking it off as you go, and map out the journey as part of that.

So you've got your objectives and your requirements.

So you can map out the journey by creating a visual roadmap that outlines each step of the process.

So this could be a project plan, it could be something in Trello, or if it's something at home, it can literally be a whiteboard looking at, you know, the steps towards your holiday, you know, like the nativity calendar of your project, counting down the days and making sure that each task under each day is complete before you set off for your wonderful holiday.

And doing something like that helps everyone understand where they fit and what's expected at each stage, especially for teams.

If you're working with teams, it's key for them to know where they fit and what happens next.

And of course there's various project management software to be able to do that.

And if you're specifically looking, you know, this was right at the beginning about looking for a software package, knowing the expectations of that software package, maybe mapping out the journey to include testing and evaluation.

And that's really the next step is the evaluating potential solutions.

Once you've got that plan, you know how are you going to implement it?

You've got your key objectives, you've mapped out the journey, you've got options.

So for instance, if you're off to Disney World, you've got different ways of getting there, There are loads of different packages, different hotels, different holiday companies and you can look at all of the options against the list of requirements that you have.

And it's a much safer place to be able to tick off what you want.

Also as I said before, including what you don't want.

And for software that's as crucial.

So really focusing in on what you do want and also the things that you don't want.

For instance, if security is important, you might not want a fairly open, relaxed system.

You might want something that is more secure and has different rules and ability to navigate security in a more professional way.

So you can look at what you want, what you don't want, and tick your list as you go through the process in order to make sure that your solution, whether it's software, whether it's a holiday, is meeting the requirements of the team members or your family, whatever it is.

So throughout the process, process, you're keeping them involved.

You've got the diagrams, you've got the tick lists, you got regular check ins and feedback sessions making sure everyone's feeling heard and valued.

And also that you know that there aren't changes or big shifts within your family or team where someone decides they don't want to go to Disney World anymore.

But keeping everyone involved leads to a better final decision.

So pre planning for major life events or holidays, but especially around a software solution is really, really important.

I've seen too many people buy software based on something that they think is a fit because at high level it looks like it and but when deep down they want something much more.

Now a really simple example of this is someone who wants a calendar booking system.

I worked for a software company who designed specific requirements and it's amazing how many specific requirements companies have for a booking system.

Whether they want invoicing with that, whether they want automatic emails with it, whether they want again security and prevention of random and people book in meetings.

It's all really crucial to know right down to the nth degree what those details are before you go and buy a system.

Because you can buy the system and find out that actually it doesn't do half of what you really wanted to do.

So get clear on your requirements before you buy a house, a software system holiday, or get your kids into the next school.

Whatever it is for you.

Thank you for joining me today on this Tips and Tech Tuesday, and if you found it helpful, please like and share this video to your network.

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And I shall see you tomorrow for Wednesday.

Woo.

And it's also day 10 of the challenge, so this will be the last of seeing me every day.

Okay, bye for now.

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