Two minutes

How badly do your
systems disagree?

Score twelve signs from 0 to 3. You get a number out of 36 and a straight read on whether it is worth doing anything about. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you decide to send it.

Score on behaviour, not on the architecture diagram. What people actually do is the evidence. What the diagram says should happen is not.

Sign 1: Duplicate data entry has become normal

Duplicate data entry has become normal

The same customer, job or invoice keyed into two or three places.

Sign 2: People are building their own shadow process

People are building their own shadow process

“I’ve got my own spreadsheet for that.”

Sign 3: Reports do not match across departments

Reports do not match across departments

Sales, operations and finance each tell a different story.

Sign 4: The same job or customer appears twice

The same job or customer appears twice

Two invoices to one client; a contractor listed twice in the register.

Sign 5: Teams avoid the “automated” process

Teams avoid the “automated” process

Staff quietly prefer the manual route.

Sign 6: No one can explain who owns the data

No one can explain who owns the data

Who can change the product code? Who owns the customer record?

Sign 7: Changing one system breaks something unrelated

Changing one system breaks something unrelated

A payroll change breaks a finance report.

Sign 8: Every fix creates a new problem

Every fix creates a new problem

One patch causes three more issues.

Sign 9: The same manual checks appear in every process

The same manual checks appear in every process

Stock, credit limits and credentials still checked by hand.

Sign 10: New staff take weeks to learn the workarounds

New staff take weeks to learn the workarounds

Onboarding includes a tour of “the real process”.

Sign 11: You have integrations, but no visibility into failures

You have integrations, but no visibility into failures

Messages fail silently. A token expires. Nobody is told.

Sign 12: The last report was good, but nothing changed

The last report was good, but nothing changed

A tidy document, then silence.

0 — never3 — constant, and everyone knows it

Scored 0 of 12.

Prefer paper? The same twelve signs are in the write-up, with a printable scored version you can run past your team.