Navceed

Workflow break check · your result

Where your workflow between your tools typically breaks

These are the places setups like yours usually fail; they are not findings about your systems, since nothing here looked at them. Each one comes with a way to check it yourself. Navceed is being built to run checks of these six kinds; today it runs them on an example company, and connecting your own tools is coming next.

1. The counts at each end quietly differ

Check firstAnywhereYou can run thisabout 45 min

Shown because you answered “Never”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. Make a table of the last eight weeks with two columns: records that left, records that arrived. Divide arrived by left. A sudden step down marks the week something broke.

The number that left one tool and the number that arrived in the next drift apart, and no report shows the gap because each tool only reports its own side.

Why it happens. Counts are read when they are reported, not compared as they happen.

Usually fixed by: Whoever owns the reporting.
Kind of break, one of six: Count: do the numbers at each end agree?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

2. A step stops, or runs late, and nobody is told

Check firstAnywhereRun by whoever runs the stepabout 20 min

Shown because you answered “Someone would tell us”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. For each step, write how long it normally goes without producing anything, then look at the time since its last output. Anything silent for three times its normal gap deserves a look.

A step that should run every hour or every day stops, or slips by hours, while everything around it looks normal. Work piles up behind it.

Why it happens. A connection lost its login, hit a limit or failed once and was never retried, and an error log nobody reads is the only place it shows.

Usually fixed by: Whoever runs the step.
Kind of break, one of six: Freshness: is the step still running, and on time?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

3. A rule that should always hold is not checked

Check firstAnywhereRun by the tool's adminabout 30 min

Shown because you answered “It is a rule on paper only”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. Write the rule as a filter (for example: records older than a day with no owner) and run it today. Count what comes back. If the number is not zero, the rule is not holding.

There is a rule everyone believes in (every record has an owner, no duplicates, nothing waits more than a day) and nothing checks it, so exceptions pile up unseen.

Why it happens. The rule was agreed once and nobody turned it into a check that runs on its own.

Usually fixed by: The owner of the rule.
Kind of break, one of six: Condition: does a rule that should always hold, hold?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

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4. A record never arrives in the next tool

Worth a quick lookAnywhereYou can run thisabout 20 min

Shown because you answered “I'm not sure, to: How would you find out if a record never arrived in the next tool?”.

How to check, and why it happens
How to check. Take last week's records from the first tool (first-time ones only, leaving out tests) and look each up in the next tool. List the ones missing and look for what they share: a rare value, a blank required field, a peak day.

Something that should move from one tool to the next is refused, skipped or held back, and the person or company it was about never shows up. The first tool says it sent it.

Why it happens. A rule, a required field, a daily limit or a lost login stops it, and nothing tells the people who care.

Usually fixed by: Whoever owns the connection, with the owner of the receiving tool.
Kind of break, one of six: Arrival: did it show up in the next tool in time?
No public source found for this one: it is our reading of how these hand-offs usually work.

The common questions follow six kinds of check: Arrival (did it show up in the next tool in time?), Return path (does what the next tool did get back to the first?), Count (do the numbers at each end agree?), Freshness (is the step still running, and on time?), Field landed (did each field arrive with a value, in the right place?), Condition (does a rule that should always hold, hold?).

Checking by hand does not last

Everything above is a one-off look. The breaks that cost you are the ones that start next Tuesday, when someone changes a field.

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