Datasheet

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CHAPTER 1: WHAT’S INVOLVED: DEFINING THE POSITION ■
This example is useful because it illustrates the concept that you can’t accom-
plish a task without understanding it and proactively managing how that task will be
accomplished. A little thought on the matter leads to the following conclusions:
• To document CAD standards, you have to define them first.
• To define CAD standards, you have to know what users and customers need.
• CAD standards are ineffective if users don’t understand them.
• CAD standards are pointless if nobody follows them.
It becomes apparent that in order to accomplish the perceived task (maintaining
CAD standards, in this case), you have to think about how that task will actually be
done in your work environment. There’s no way, in this particular case, that I could tell
you how to write a CAD standard. I could give you some guidelines, but the only way
you’ll write a bulletproof CAD standard is to consider what you’ll control, how the
standard will be used in your environment, how you’ll train your users, and how you’ll
follow up to make sure the standards are enforced.
More Examples
I’ll give you two more examples of common CAD management tasks, common man-
agement perceptions of those tasks, and what the real tasks supporting those perceived
tasks typically are. Along the way I’ll provide some insight.
Figure 1.2 Here we see graphically how the actual tasks you manage are quite different from the perceived
task(s) your management sees.
What Senior
Management Sees
What the CAD
Manager Sees
Perception
Disconnect
Task 1 in Theory
Task N in Theory
Task 1
Sub-Tasks
(Reality)
Task N
Sub-Tasks
(Reality)
Note: As with most things CAD management,I’ve found that user-centric tasks like training and standard-
izing work processes are the most complicated parts of the task.
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