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Figure 7.4 Spectacular projects like the pyramids were completed using old tools.But they could certainly be done faster and
cheaper (in real terms) with today’s technology.
Faster or Cheaper, or (We Hope) Both
The only reason we’re using anything today that we didn’t use yesterday is because it
makes existing tasks faster or cheaper, or (we hope) both. Believe me when I say that
if we could do engineering with slide rules and paper faster than computers and plot-
ters, we would still be doing so.
All businesses need to consider how new CAD technologies, especially 3D tech-
nologies, can best be integrated into the everyday engineering environment in a way
that delivers faster, cheaper results. To illustrate faster/cheaper, let’s look at the evolving
technology of business communication and draw a few conclusions as we go.
Some examples of the faster/cheaper paradigm might be the following:
Letters faster than couriers And people were even willing to pay more for speed when
the Pony Express came into being. The motivating factor here was faster even though it
wasn’t always cheaper.
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Standard mail cheaper than express When standard mail delivery was implemented
(along with the standard postage stamp), mail was available to everyone for less. The
motivating factor here was cheaper even though delivery was slower.
Air mail faster than standard mail Even when mail was cheap and available to all, air
mail delivered the ability to get it there more quickly. The motivating factor here was
faster even though it was more expensive.
FedEx faster than air mail Unlike airmail before it, FedEx got mail there the next day,
guaranteed. The motivating factor here was much faster even though it was much more
expensive.
Fax much faster than FedEx Faxing got the information there in minutes for the cost
of a phone call. The motivating factors here were cheaper and faster.

E-mail as fast as faxing E-mail had all the speed of faxing but didn’t require the printing
and scanning of paper documents. Information is e-mailed in its native data format. The
motivating factor here is cheaper because less labor is used to handle the information.
Where was the real paradigm change? It was with the fax machine (not the com-
puter), because the fax machine was where technological changes facilitated faster and
cheaper at the same time. And please notice that the evolution of mail handling took a
century, whereas the fax machine went from nothing to full business implementation in
five years.
The moral of the story? If you can find technology that is both faster and
cheaper, that technology will be absorbed rapidly, and the change can’t be turned
around.
Faster/Cheaper Data
What happens when we arrive at a plateau in the speed of information movement, like
where we are today? We can’t make things faster anymore. Once speed is no longer the
advantage, the entire process moves toward cost control.
In today’s CAD market, we clearly have the following results in terms of data
formats:
• DWG files are ubiquitous in 2D environments.
• 3D data formats are somewhat less defined.
• Data is portable, though!
Note: In architectural environments,more comprehensive building models and design platforms allow
more people to use the same data without interface boundaries along the way.Motivation:cheaper.
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What happens when we have enough agreement on data format that we can
move information around via e-mail attachment? Here are a few ideas that come
to mind:
• Each person in the design chain can open the file without rekeying data.
• Downstream users in the field can use the same data you do.

• Ground-based shipping (and its cost) goes away via e-mail.
• Errors are reduced.
Don’t all of these point to faster and cheaper? I think they do! I therefore think
that the formatting of data into industry standard CAD formats with electronic collab-
oration via e-mail will be the way to go, because things can’t get much faster, but they
can get cheaper by standardizing data formats.
What will be the next faster/cheaper innovation that will totally change the way
we design cars, buildings, and infrastructure? Who knows? The point is, we have to
watch the trends carefully and try to forecast the change.
Thinking Like Management
Let’s try an alternate way of looking at the faster/cheaper paradigm from a manage-
ment standpoint. I’ll use the example of moving to 3D design software as a back-
ground for the discussion because I hear this discussion so much in industry. If you
can visualize the transition to 3D from management’s perspective and use faster/
cheaper metrics, you’ll be surprised at how much better you understand the process.
I’ve often made the assertion that management teams are increasingly ambivalent
toward implementing 3D software because they think it will take time to do (not
faster) and it will be expensive (that is, not cheaper). Given that perspective, you can
see why they’re hesitant. Let me run through a list of typical management thoughts
regarding implementing new software:
The old software runs just fine Translation: They don’t see the cheaper in new software.
New software requires customization The old software has been so highly customized
that any new software will require a substantial amount of customization and debug-
ging just to get it to production level. Management doesn’t see this as cheaper.
Note: In manufacturing environments,we can now do 3D prototyping from the same model we used to per-
form stress analysis, thermal calculations,and kinematics interference studies.Motivations:faster and cheaper.
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New software is buggy Software upgrades can be buggy, which makes CAD managers

wait for service packs or the next release. These types of problems are neither fast nor
cheap.
Upgrading takes time Management has no patience for upgrades that don’t go
smoothly, and thus CAD managers are hesitant to embark on upgrading out of fear.
What is fascinating about these trends is that they’re all business and productiv-
ity driven rather than technologically driven. It seems like you can have the greatest
software release since time began, and it won’t matter if it isn’t easy to install, integrate,
and run quickly with low learning curve times from everyone involved.
Finding the Faster/Cheaper
Because we’re talking about dealing with new software releases, let’s examine some
ways that new software can be introduced into your company’s culture with minimal
cost and maximum impact—thus garnering maximum management support. If you
combine some of these suggestions with a healthy dose of faster/cheaper, you should be
able to allay management’s fears. Try some of the following approaches to start the
conversation:
Generate a list of great time-saving features By listing the new software features that
allow you to save time, you show management where the faster is. Often, management
thinks that we always want new software and that we don’t give thought to what the
benefits will be. Head off this skepticism by illustrating your thought process and
showing management that you’ve found the faster in the new software.
Generate a planning document You’ve found the faster in your new software. Now,
plan things so you can get the faster done cheaper. Sometimes management just wants
to know that you have a plan, so show them yours—and make sure they know you’ve
got your eye on the faster/cheaper paradigm while you do so.
Demonstrate a smooth implementation timeframe By planning for new software to
transition in smoothly, you’ll minimize disruptions and keep mistakes to a minimum.
Although smoothness doesn’t get things done faster or cheaper, it keeps down the costs
of mistakes, thus maximizing whatever faster/cheaper you’ve already planned for.
Plan for successful training Like a smooth implementation, planning for training keeps
down mistakes. But training offers a powerful faster benefit by generating productive

people that much faster. Sell your skeptical management team on training by using the
faster motif, and watch how their opinion about training changes.
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Planning for the Future (via the Past)
I know the discussion of the faster/cheaper paradigm isn’t a technical topic per se, but a
number of technical principles simplify down to what is faster/cheaper in the business
world. My point in introducing you to the faster/cheaper paradigm is to give you the
insight into why things change and to allow you to forecast which technologies will
work for you.
Whenever you’re in doubt, use some of my historical references, and then use
that history to analyze current-day technologies and see how they apply to your current
work environment. As you do so, always ask these questions:
• Will taking this action make things faster (or cheaper)?
• Will taking this action make us more competitive (faster or cheaper)?
• Will taking this action allow us to serve our clients better (faster)?
• Will we generate more profits by taking this action (cheaper)?
If you can answer yes to one or more of the questions by making a change, then
it’s probably a good change to make. If you can answer yes to all these questions, then
you’ve found an idea that is faster and cheaper, and you should be moving rapidly to
implement the change.
Now that you’re thinking about the faster/cheaper paradigm, you may find it
hard to go back to your old ways of thinking about technology. No matter what else, I
guarantee that your company’s senior management is thinking faster/cheaper, so why
not think the same way?
Faster/Cheaper Internet
Why should any CAD work process move to WANs or the Internet? Don’t we already
have methodologies that work? The key to examining the possible impact of Internet
methodologies is to focus on how costs can be reduced and time spans accelerated. It’s

generally true in business environments that faster and cheaper are better, and cool
technology is pushed aside if it doesn’t support these dual objectives. Let’s examine
how the Internet can potentially make the business of design faster and cheaper, and
see if you think it will affect your company.
On the cheaper side of the equation, there is no dispute that most designers,
engineers, and other technology professionals have access to the Internet at work or
home. Therefore, if you can make drawings, markups, plots, digital pictures, and
scanned images available to your employees, customers, and vendors via the Internet,
you’ll save money. How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, if your customers can
help themselves to key files via the Internet, you don’t have to pay for FedEx or faxing
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■ FASTER/CHEAPER INTERNET
charges, and you save time by not having to send e-mails or other manually generated
correspondence. You save on both service and labor.
On the faster side of the equation, Internet sites allow customers and vendors to
access information at any time on their own terms. This self-serve mode of operation
cuts down on phone tag, errant communications, misrouted e-mails, and so on. The
simple fact that customers can help themselves allows the process to proceed at their
own pace. This not only makes things faster for the customer but also gives them the
feeling you’ve custom-tailored a solution for them.
The Possibilities
Now that you’re attuned to the faster/cheaper paradigm, it’s time to put the concept to
use. What sort of Internet processes could you add to your CAD environment that
would facilitate faster/cheaper work? An interesting question, to be sure. I’d like to
split the possibilities into two categories:
User-centric functions:
• Wide-area network support for project file directories
• Importing drawing content from vendor sites
• Internet-based training

Collaborative/Customer-centric functions:
• Electronic publishing/sharing of drawing files
• Electronic markup and draft printing of drawing modifications
• FTP drop-box file sharing
All these types of functions are nuts and bolts issues that aren’t terribly sexy but
do need to be dealt with. My point is that new technology (Internet/WAN) is useful
only if it solves problems you have (rather than creating new problems) at a lower price
point than other options. Therefore, I’ve found that focusing on proven technologies
that work well at low costs yields good results for almost all companies.
Note: Don’t be afraid to use a time-tested technology with low costs (like FTP) rather than bleeding-edge
technology that costs more.Remember,the point is to get the job done, and the faster/cheaper paradigm is
the way you judge what works.
Note: Faster/Cheaper: not newer-cooler!
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Using ROI Metrics
We’ve all encountered limitations within our CAD systems. Sometimes we just don’t
have the functions we need to perform certain tasks efficiently. Chances are, you’ve
wanted to use your CAD management position to do something about the shortcom-
ings but have been met with management resistance to spending money. The key to get-
ting what you want and building a case for CAD management is to use an ROI-based
approach to justify your arguments.
Every year you spend money on upgrades, supplies, training, hardware, and so
on, but how do you know if you’re spending your money well? This is a question that
management teams very much want an answer to and one that CAD managers should
ask. In order to know if you’re spending your money well, you need a measuring stick:
a set of metrics that allows you to evaluate your spending.
ROI metrics allow you to keep score and prioritize which spending items in your
annual budget are delivering the goods and which ones you could do without. Interested?

The good news is that you don’t need a business degree or accounting certificate to
understand and use ROI metrics. Let’s look at a case of how you can use ROI; as we
go, we’ll examine how persuasive this is from management’s perspective.
Defining ROI
Return on investment is exactly what the name implies: a returned value that arises
from investing in a certain way. In layman’s terms, think of purchasing a new software
program and then wanting to know how well that investment is paying you back. In
almost all CAD management scenarios, the return on your investment will be in time
savings. Anything you spend money on should generate a savings amount that justifies
the spending.
Stick with me while we set out some basic terms and concepts that are crucial to
understanding ROI metrics. Pay particular attention to the concept of different ROI
values in different years, because this is crucial for CAD managers:
ROI Return on investment. The savings an investment can produce divided by the
outlay the investment requires, expressed in annual percentage form. For example, if
putting a new plotter in place can save you $1,000 per year in costs, but the plotter
costs $5,000 in outlays to purchase and implement, the ROI is (1000/5000)*100%
or 20%.
Realized savings The amount of money you can save by purchasing a new product or
service. Two examples are reduced paper and toner costs realized by purchasing a
newer plotter, and reduced labor from applying custom CAD programming.
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■ USING ROI METRICS
Initial outlay The initial amount of money you spend on a given item or service. An
example is the initial purchase price of a plotter, computer, or consultant.
Labor outlay The amount of time it will take you and/or your staff to implement new
items or services into your organization. An example is your time to set up a new plot-
ter or computer, or staff time spent attending training classes.
Recurring outlay The ongoing amount of money required to keep a given item in serv-

ice. Examples include an annual service contract for hardware, software subscriptions,
consulting retainer contracts, and even recurring labor.
Year 1 ROI The amount of savings in the first year of the investment, divided by the
total outlay in the first year. This number is typically low for new hardware and soft-
ware because you have large initial outlays in the first year.
Year 2 ROI The amount of savings in the second year of the investment, divided by
the total outlay in the second year. This number is typically much higher than year 1
because the large initial and labor outlays were absorbed in year 1.
Year N ROI The amount of savings in the last year of the investment, divided by the
total outlay in that year. N generally is the number of useful years of service for the
investment. For hardware, N can be anywhere from 3 to 5, whereas software usually
has a useful life of two years.
Aggregate ROI The average ROI values for year 1 through year N. This aggregate
number gives a true measure of how well the investment performs over its entire life.
Admittedly, there’s some uncertainty in forecasting an investment years into the future,
but figuring the aggregate ROI value is better than guessing.
Payback period The number of years/months it takes for the savings from an invest-
ment to exactly equal the outlays for the investment. An example is a software utility
that generates $2,000 per year in savings but costs $4,000 in outlays over two years to
acquire; it has a payback period of two years.
Computing a Quick Example
Suppose you’ve done a study of your AutoCAD personnel and determined that they’re
wasting an inordinate amount of time looking for standard blocks, title frames, XREF
attachments, and graphics files. The waste is so obvious to you that you decide it
would be worthwhile to create a standardized set of tool palettes that all users could
use to quickly perform tasks that slow them down. Sounds good so far, right? But how
do you get the approval to spend the time and resources you’ll need to make it happen?
Let’s work up this idea in an ROI format and see how compelling the case can be from
a financial standpoint.
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Figure 7.5 ROI computations represent a balancing act between time and money and quantifying that balance.
In order to do the ROI math, you need to determine the realized savings and
outlays required to create and implement the tool palettes. Here are some values I’ve
observed in the real world that can be used for this example:
Realized savings Suppose you can find a small change to make in a given work process
that will generate time savings for your CAD users. How do you quantify those savings?
If you can save each CAD user one hour per week, and that CAD user makes $20 per
hour, the average annual savings will be $960 based on a 48-week work year. If you
have 10 CAD users, an annual savings of $9,600 can be realized.
Initial outlay The initial outlay for this example is $0 because you already have the
CAD software and you don’t need any additional software to create tool palettes.
Labor outlay The amount of time it will take you to gather all the blocks and graph-
ics, organize them into tool palettes, deploy the palettes to users’ desktops, and provide
some basic training on the functionality of your tool palettes must be considered in two
portions: Your time to create, deploy, and train based on an estimate of 28 hours of
labor at $40 per hour equals $1,120; and 1 hour of training per CAD user at $20 per
hour equals $200 for the entire department. The total labor outlay is therefore $1,320.
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■ USING ROI METRICS
Recurring outlay Each time you upgrade your CAD software, you’ll need to make sure
you move all the blocks, graphics, and palettes to the new version to assure proper
functionality. You shouldn’t have to retrain users on palette use, so the outlay will be
purely your labor. Assuming a generous 10 hours per upgrade cycle at your $40 per
hour rate, the recurring outlay to maintain the palettes is $400 annually.
Now you can move to an ROI computation for year 1 by dividing the $9,600
savings per year by the year one outlays of $1,320 and converting to percentages. Some
quick calculator work will determine the ROI to be a staggering 727% for the first

year. Think that’s good? Consider the year 2 analysis, where the same $9,600 is saved
but only $400 is spent to achieve the savings, thus yielding an ROI of 2,400%. An
aggregate ROI for the first two years of this example is an average of the year 1 and
year 2 values—1,564%, if you do the math.
The payback period for this example is achieved quickly because the project
generates more savings in year 1 than it costs. If you divide the $1,320 in year 1 out-
lays by $9,600 in year 1 savings, you’ll see that payback occurs in 0.14 years, or seven
weeks! Think you can get management’s attention with these calculations and support-
ing data? You bet.
Drawing Conclusions
I’ll now draw some conclusions from the example and extend the logic to make addi-
tional recommendations you can use in your day-to-day CAD management tasks:
Big savings from small investments The example saved a lot of money with a small
investment of your time and no software expenditure. Management will love these
types of efficiency improvements precisely because they generate big ROI values with
no out-of-pocket expenses (because you’re already on salary).
Achieving savings is what ROI is all about As you run through some example cases,
you’ll start to think about how you can save money more than how you can spend it.
This psychological shift is profound and one that your management will very much
appreciate.
ROI shows the big picture As you become increasingly aware of ROI methods, you’ll
think more about how you work and how to make your workplace more efficient with
minimal spending.
The formula always works No matter what you’re buying, programming, or training,
the formula of savings divided by outlays always covers the bases. Just make sure you
capture all the outlays, and you’ll arrive at ROI values quickly and easily.
When you think about your job from an ROI perspective, you can’t help being
more business minded and value focused. When you combine your new-found ROI
expertise with the technical skills you already have, you’ll be a true CAD management
double threat.

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Putting ROI to Use
Now that you know how to quantify how well an investment performs, you may want
to go back to your budget and think about each item from an ROI standpoint. Yes,
going back through your budget to project ROI values will take some time on your
part, but the exercise will help you set your budget priorities. You’ll also find that
when you submit your budget backed up with ROI computations, you’ll get a tremen-
dous amount of management respect and much smoother budget approval.
I hope I’ve inspired you to start looking at your budgets and expenditures from
an ROI perspective.
Performing Bottleneck Analyses
Now that you’ve got an idea of what an ROI analysis is and what the variables are,
let’s explore an interesting special case called a bottleneck analysis. Let me begin by
defining a bottleneck as a limitation in your current software, hardware, or processes
that is costing time and, therefore, money. Obviously, if you can eliminate bottlenecks,
you’ll save time and, therefore, money, and management will love you for doing so.
I’ll use a real-world client example of a bottleneck that existed because of the
lack of a software utility. The CAD manager at the company couldn’t get management
to authorize the software utility, thus perpetuating the bottleneck. I’ll work through the
process we used to outline the bottleneck and obtain approval for the software, so you
can follow along. Here’s how it works in the sequence we used:
Savings buys the software We proposed to use the labor savings we could generate (by
removing the bottleneck) to pay for the software. Therefore, we had to illustrate that a
$45/hour architect taking two hours to create a door and window schedule was costing
the company $90. If we used the software utility to automate the production of these
schedules, then we could save the company $90.
Additional investigation showed that if the design firm produced 100 of these
schedules a year, then a total cost saving of $9,000 could be realized.

Create a benchmark Now that you’ve established the bottleneck points that cost you
productivity, you should go back and verify your time savings estimates. By creating a
written summary of your time savings estimates, you create what is known as a bench-
marking document. You should use the benchmark as a test case for the new software
you choose to purchase so you can prove that everything will work.
Note: This example is a perfect real-world bottleneck analysis: It finds a process that is time consuming
and then produces a payback based on time savings.
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■ PERFORMING BOTTLENECK ANALYSES
Figure 7.6 Just as removing a traffic jam improves traffic flow,removing productivity bottlenecks in your CAD envi-
ronment allows more work to flow.Using ROI methods to identify bottlenecks lets you purchase the tools you need.
In the case of the architect making window and door schedules, we wrote a
benchmark that included creating a drawing with a variety of doors and windows and
then producing a finished drawing with the generated schedules. Note that in this
benchmark case, we took care to create a drawing first and then generate the sched-
ules. This way, we observed the time consumed to create the drawing using the add-on
software we were analyzing, to capture the entire experience of using the software.
Record your findings in a spreadsheet format, and make it easy for management
to read.
Total the costs Add a tab to your spreadsheet that totals the costs of acquiring the
software you wish to buy. Consider the following components:
• Purchase price
• Ongoing software support
• Your time to install the software
• Time to train new users
Compute the ROI Divide the savings you can obtain by eliminating the bottleneck by
the costs, and you’ll have an ROI number. A general rule of thumb is that ROI num-
bers greater than 1 (or 100%, if you prefer) are a great return on your company’s
investment.

Show management At this point, you understand the bottleneck and software solution
well—so well that you’ve quantified things in a neatly written spreadsheet and computed
an ROI. If the numbers look good, go show management, and ask for permission to
purchase the software.
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Building Your Own Case
You can now use the previous outline to build your own bottleneck analysis studies.
Some of the more typical places I’ve found bottlenecks lurking are as follows:
• Plotting
• File management
• Standards libraries management
• Menu/toolbar/interface perception
The great news is that a wide variety of software accelerates or eliminates the
problems associated with these types of bottlenecks, so you have a good starting point
to work from. Why not take the initiative and look around your company for trouble-
some bottlenecks, and perform your own savings/cost/ROI analyses? When you do so,
I think you’ll be surprised at how receptive management will be.
Bottlenecking Conclusions
I can report from my own experience that when companies won’t pour money into
new technology, they will spend money to eliminate costly bottlenecks. Refining and
enhancing existing technology to improve efficiency seems to always be in vogue. And
in companies in which technology spending is trending up, there is a strong motivation
to refine new technology to fit the company’s needs. Therefore, you have every reason to
be optimistic about new technology spending if you frame the debate correctly.
The tried-and-true concepts of ROI and automating redundant tasks have now
joined the mantras of cost reduction and right-sizing in the corporate world. If you can
identify opportunities to increase productivity for the employees in your company and
prove a high enough ROI to justify the needed investment, you’re golden! And elimi-

nating bottlenecks can generate some radically high ROI numbers.
It seems that no company, regardless of its circumstances, wants to add employ-
ees unless it absolutely has to. This aversion to hiring plays into investing in technology
that enables outside contractors to collaborate and places a high premium on eliminat-
ing information handling. Unless your company is in a death spiral, management will
always be receptive to ideas that allow more work to get done with the same number
of people.
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■ BUILDING A LONG-TERM PLAN
Building a
Long-Term Plan
Achieving success in CAD management isn’t an
accident. Few CAD managers have long-term
success without planning for it. Therefore, build-
ing a long-term game plan, one that allows you to
tackle tasks in a logical order, is crucial to guar-
anteeing your success. In this chapter, I’ll give you
some suggestions to build that longer-term plan
and approach it in modular chunks.
8
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By looking at short-term, medium-term, and longer-term components of your
plan, you can orchestrate a course of action that will work for you over the long haul
while helping you achieve short-term success at the same time. I’ll also present some
methodologies you can use to prioritize, sort, or filter your long-term plan to help you
achieve better communication with your top managers and get them to support your
plans. Frequently, CAD managers have to prove short-term success before a long-term

plan can be adopted or supported by the management team. So, I’ll give you some tips
on how to develop those concepts, as well.
Figure 8.1 When NASA launches a rocket, the agency takes lots of time to plan and ponder
how the mission might go. Approach your CAD management plan with the same attention to
planning and detail, and you’ll make far fewer mistakes and enjoy a smooth flight.
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■ CAPTURING GOOD IDEAS
Capturing Good Ideas
You can’t plan for anything unless you have good ideas to put in your plan. This is
just as true now as it’s always been, even as computers and software and all our work
methodologies have changed radically over the years. Here’s the great news for CAD
managers: CAD managers enjoy the ability to see everything that goes on with respect
to their software tools. Chances are, most CAD managers have seen almost every prob-
lem that could crop up in of a workplace and, more important, have already figured
out how to fix it. Therefore, CAD managers tend to know where the problems are and
can formulate great ideas for making those problems go away.
For the purpose of communicating a plan to upper management or even to your
users, it’s crucial that you have good ideas that everybody can support. By listing the
things you’d like to fix or improve, you demonstrate to users that you feel their pain
and understand their day-to-day problems while also showing management that you’re
trying to improve efficiency. Therefore, your first task is to capture all your good ideas
and start to prioritize those ideas and fashion them into a long-term plan.
Figure 8.2 Don’t underestimate the power of recording your thoughts on paper. Confronting a blank pad makes you think more
and fiddle with technology less.You can use a pad anywhere at any time to capture your great ideas for more detailed work later.
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To begin collecting your ideas, you should sit down with a blank sheet of paper
and record every productivity improving idea you can think of. The keys to this exer-

cise are to not overthink and to move quickly. Grab a pencil and paper, and spend 10
minutes writing down your good ideas. As you do so, please remember the following
guidelines:
Capture thoughts quickly Don’t worry about grammatical accuracy. Don’t worry
about how neat your handwriting is. Simply record the ideas. The point is to get every-
thing down on paper before you forget.
Don’t worry about who this idea might offend Don’t worry about politics: Worry
about whether it’s a good idea. There will be time enough for politics later.
Think about saving money Any time you have an idea that can save money, that’s an
especially good idea. Even if you can’t quantify the savings directly, record the idea;
mark it with a dollar sign so you’ll know later when you look back at the list that this
is a money-saving idea.
Consider time savings Think about which ideas can save the most user time. These
ideas will be the ones users gravitate toward and support you on the most. Mark these
with a T, meaning time, so that when you reprioritize the list later, you’ll know which
ones will emphasize time savings for users.
That’s all there is to it. At this point, you should have a decent list of ideas that
you can transcribe into a more readable format. I recommend listing items in a spread-
sheet with a few different columns for money savings, user-time savings, and so on.
You can now worry about grammatical accuracy; and because you’ll be putting the list
into a spreadsheet format, your handwriting won’t matter.
Now, think about the ideas on your list. Look at what areas you’ve done well in
and which areas you may have missed, and give the entire list more detailed thought.
Save your list, and print it out. Then, leave the printout on your desk so you can come
back and read your list of good ideas. If another good idea comes to you, scribble it
down on your printout. Keep recording your good ideas: This way, every time you
have a great idea, you’ll capture it on paper immediately.
Every week or so, open your spreadsheet file and type in your handwritten com-
ments. Use this weekly logging in of ideas as your opportunity to re-think your list. By
going through the list and thinking about it in a prioritized manner, you may even get

more good ideas in the process. The object of this entire exercise is to get into the habit
of capturing ideas whenever they strike you and logging them, because having a good
idea is no good if you forget it or don’t act on it.
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■ PRIORITIZING IDEAS ON A COST BASIS
Prioritizing Ideas on a Cost Basis
Now that you have a list of good ideas to work with and manipulate, it’s time to priori-
tize that list based on costs. You must look at every idea in your list and think about
how much it would cost to make that idea a reality. Let me give you a few examples.
Let’s say you have a good idea to replace every computer in your company with a blaz-
ing fast multicore workstation. Obviously this is a costly idea, but how costly? Can you
arrive at an approximate number? If so, do that. You don’t have to worry about precise
dollars and cents; just figure an approximate cost. The aim is to establish another col-
umn that correlates to cost in your spreadsheet idea list. This will allow you to re-sort
your list later from the most to least expensive ideas.
Figure 8.3 All good ideas have a cost, and management will want to know what it is. Doing a primary sort based on cost will
allow you to answer all management cost inquiries quickly,thus making you look in command of the details.
By understanding which ideas will cost the most to implement, you’ll be able to
sort and filter your list any time based on your company’s business criteria. Here is
what I mean. Let’s say that your company is going through a rough period this year,
and money isn’t available for a lot of improvements. In this case, you can open your
list of ideas and sort them from lowest-cost ideas to highest-cost ideas. Because
money’s tight, you should obviously work on the lower-cost ideas on your prioritized
list. On the other hand, if things are going great this year, you may be able to get those
new workstations that are high on the cost column. The important thing is to gather all
your ideas and know approximately how much it will cost to implement them.
Item #1
Resulting Order
3, 2, 5, 1 then 4

Sort Method
Lowest Cost
List of Ideas
Sorting Method Results
Item #2
Item #3
Item #4
Item #5
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Prioritizing Ideas on a Complexity Basis
In the same manner in which you prioritized your list based on cost, you now should
look at your list of ideas and make a rough assessment of how complex or time-
consuming each idea will be to implement. I’ll give you a couple of examples.
Example 1: Rip out your existing CAD software, and install a completely new system
Obviously, this option would have cost components, but it would also have compo-
nents of complexity. It would take a long time to complete this task, wouldn’t it? You
would have to plan for things like software configuration, user training, and time for
users to ramp up and achieve productivity. You can see pretty quickly how complex
this idea would be to implement. Now, you should try to rate complexity based on
time or the hours it would take to get this idea implemented. Again, this won’t be a
perfect estimate. The point is to be close enough to form a comparative basis so that
you can sort your ideas based on high-complexity to low-complexity tasks.
In sharp contrast to the last example, let’s look at something that would be rela-
tively simple, like providing basic optimization of the software you already have.
Example 2: Provide a user toolbar that makes daily tasks easier to find and initiate The
user toolbar would facilitate making daily tasks easier by cutting down on keystrokes
and consolidating commonly used functions onto a single toolbar. This idea would not
be complex to achieve because it wouldn’t take much time for you, the CAD manager,

to make the changes. Complexity for the user would be low as well because it wouldn’t
take long for the user to learn to use a simple toolbar. Therefore this idea would be
placed low on the complexity scale and would therefore be easy to implement.
Figure 8.4 Any idea takes work to implement but how much and how complex will that work be? Doing a sort based on com-
plexity will help you decide which tasks are easiest to implement.
Item #1
Resulting Order
5, 4, 1, 2 then 3
Sort Method
Least Complex
List of Ideas
Sorting Method Results
Item #2
Item #3
Item #4
Item #5
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■ PRIORITIZING IDEAS ON A COST-SAVINGS BASIS
A good reason to prioritize ideas based on complexity is that during periods
when your department is busy and you don’t have much time to make organization-
type changes inside your department, those ideas with the lowest level of complexity
can be tackled first. On the other hand, when business is a bit slow and you have a lull
in project flow, it’s a good time to tackle slightly more complex projects. You’ll find
that prioritizing all your ideas on a complexity scale is useful.
Prioritizing Ideas on a Cost-Savings Basis
In the prior section on building your list of ideas, I advised that you consider those
items that save the greatest amount of user time and mark them with a T so you’ll real-
ize which ones can yield the greatest user-time savings. Considering the simple equation
that says time equals money, you can look at the ideas on your list that save the most

time and realize that they’ll be the ones that also save the most money. Your next chal-
lenge as you examine your list is to estimate how much cost savings can be achieved by
implementing each idea.
As you look through your ideas, you’ll start to realize a few things:
Simple changes can save lots of time In a prior example, I mentioned a user-generated
or customized toolbar that would reduce keystrokes and make redundant tasks easier
for CAD users. This idea would be neither complex nor technically challenging to
achieve but would save lots of time.
Complexity costs Consider a complex idea like removing your current CAD system
and replacing it with something entirely new. From the standpoint of cost savings, it
probably wouldn’t save anything in the first year; it might even lose money in the first
year, causing you to wait two to three years to realize any cost savings. The realization
that more complex projects have higher costs and lower savings at least partially
explains why senior management is often reluctant to adopt new technology.
Save time for many users—save more money This is a basic truism. The more you solve
problems that affect multiple people, the greater the time savings you can achieve. There-
fore, go through your list and identify the ideas that can save the most people the greatest
amount of time, and you’ll find the things that tend to return the highest overall savings.
Look at ideas that provide automation When you remove steps, condense procedures
into shorter time frames, or reduce the possibility for error by automating, you start to
save money. Look at every idea on your list from an angle of automation, and you’ll
see where some of the savings are.
Convert time into money using a labor rate If you can save 15 hours of CAD user
time, and CAD users cost $30 per hour, then you’ve saved $450. If you don’t know the
CAD user labor rate, or how to figure labor costs for designers or engineers, ask your
upper managers. They should be able to tell you what the labor rate is, and once you
have that, it’s easy to convert saved time into money.
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Figure 8.5 Rating your ideas in terms of complexity and time savings allows you to see which ideas generate the greatest costs
savings fastest.And you know your management will enjoy saving money sooner rather than later.
Total up all your calculations for each item, and you’ll have a surprisingly accu-
rate estimate for every item on your idea list. Now you can sort based on cost savings.
And the one undeniable truth with respect to cost savings is that management likes to
save money. If you look at the ideas on your list that can save the greatest amount of
money, you know those ideas will go over well with management. You may want to
start there with your longer-term plan.
Documenting Your Processes
A funny thing happens when you start to think about how to run your office better. Up
to this point, you’ve been listing your good ideas for improving the way you work, and
you’ve thought about how much they would cost, how complex they would be to
implement, and how much money they could save your company. All this is good
because it gets the creative juices flowing and makes you think about how to do things
better. But once you finish with your thoughts and have documented everything in a
list, it comes time to think about what it will take to make those changes—to imple-
ment the good ideas on your list. You can’t do this without thinking about the
processes currently being using in your workplace.
Note: When you think about making positive changes, it comes down to understanding what your users
do (processes),how they do it (methodologies),and how to change those behaviors to get better work results.
Item #1
Sort Method
Time Savings
Resulting Order
3, 2, 5, 1 then 4
Sort Method
Least Complex
List Items
Sorting Method
Results

Item #2
Item #3
Item #4
Item #5
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■ DOCUMENTING YOUR PROCESSES
Let’s look at a basic example. Suppose you want to replace a manually driven process
of creating drawings for new projects and try to automate it with some sort of set-up wiz-
ard. But before you can automate it with a set-up wizard, you’re going to have to under-
stand how a job gets started, what symbology will be used, what a title frame might look
like, and all the various parameters that it takes to get a detailed drawing design set going
for a project. This means you have to thoroughly understand how the process now works
and, more important, how the process should be changed so that you can automate it.
This example provides a perfect metaphor for documenting your processes. As
you analyze what it takes to start a project, you should write down what actions occur,
who takes care of each step, and where savings or efficiencies can be achieved within
that process. In a real sense, analyzing what is wrong with the current system and put-
ting that up against your better idea almost always generates new processes that are
more optimal and more efficient. By examining what staff members do now that isn’t
working, you can understand what to do better.
Here are a few pointers for how you can document processes in a form that
everybody, from management to users, can understand:
Make a visual If three people are involved in a current work process, get them all to
come into a room. Set up a white board, and start mapping out the process visually.
Get everybody to contribute You can function as the facilitator and build the drawing
of the current process on the white board. By documenting the process in this manner,
you get a pictorial flow, almost like a flow diagram, so that you can understand each
piece in the process and how it proceeds from a chronological standpoint: what step
comes first; what step comes second, and so on. This visual exercise helps people start

to see the whole process and suggest ways to possibly improve it.
Tweak, adjust, and repeat You can now work on the white board, erasing, reordering,
moving things, drawing new arrows, and getting a new process put in place that every-
one can agree with. Then, all you have to do is either take a picture of the white board
or redraw your diagram in a notepad, and you’ve got a documented case of how the
process looked and how you’ve changed it. You’ll want to refer back to this later!
Figure 8.6 Mapping out your ideas visually helps achieve a flow-diagram approach to making changes in your CAD processes.
Note the involvement of key personnel and the feedback loop that allows for continual improvement.
Repeat as
often as
possible.
All Ideas
Find the
Easiest to
Implement
Find Time
Savings for
All Users
Verify
Maximum User
Benefit
Find Lowest
Cost to
Implement
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As you document processes using this visual modeling process, interesting things
start to happen:
1. More people within the organization understand how the company works, and

things that have been done in a certain way for years are flushed out or exposed
as being inefficient.
2. Ideas for improving the processes become that much more logical as more peo-
ple become involved in analyzing it.
3. The politics of changing processes take care of themselves because everyone in
the process feels as though they’re helping to make the changes.
Make sure you take the time to document processes and get everybody involved,
no matter how tempted you are to shortcut the process. If you take the time to do this,
I guarantee more people will understand what you’re trying to accomplish, and they
will help you accomplish it. And more people will see the value in the corrective
actions and steps that you’re trying to take. Furthermore, getting political acceptance,
with everybody on board, is crucial to being able to put any plan into effect.
Now that you’ve got some good ideas that are sorted and documented, it’s time
to put your good ideas into effect around your workplace.
Plan the Work, Work the Plan
Now that you’ve fleshed out a list and you’ve prioritized it based on costs, savings, and
complexity, it’s time to turn your list into a plan of action. You should sit down and
figure out what you’ll work on first, second, third, and so forth. As I mentioned before,
it’s crucial that you have a solid plan if you hope to achieve your goals.
Once you have the plan in place, you must remain focused and follow through
with it. CAD managers tend to get caught up in daily firefighting or reactive mode, and
your work plan will help keep you on track. It’s your anchor. It tells you what you
need to be working on at all times. Your work plan functions as your map for driving
down the CAD management road over the next couple of years.
To lay the foundation for your plan, I recommend setting up a well-formatted
spreadsheet that includes:
• Each action item
• Estimated completion date
• Notes about what tasks will have to be completed to accomplish each goal
You’ll find a sample spreadsheet

Working Plan.XLS on the accompanying CD that
you can use as a basis for this. The objective is to get all your thoughts collected into
one document in a form that can be easily sorted, reordered, and amended over time.
As with your original list of good ideas, I encourage you to print out your work plan
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■ SEQUENCING YOUR APPROACH
weekly or monthly so that it’s always in front of you and you can see whether the deci-
sions you make each day are consistent with it.
Of course, over time, business priorities and conditions change, so you may have
to adjust your plan. There’s no such thing as a plan that’s set in stone. But if you don’t
write down your plan in a way that shows what you consider to be an optimal order,
you’ll never work the plan. Every time you reevaluate your plan based on new business
conditions, input from your management team, or any other unforeseen event, at least
you’ll be working from a standard basis. You’ll be thinking about the bigger picture.
And you’ll be thinking about a longer-term course to get to your goal.
Next, you should properly sequence the tasks in your plan. Let’s look at how to
decide on a course of action.
Sequencing Your Approach
If you have all these great ideas, what’s the best order in which to undertake them? The
answer to this question will depend on the company you work for and several other
factors. Some of them are financial. Some of them are personnel based. Some of them
may have to do with the type of work environment you function in. The point is, you
want to have a list of factors that you can use to analyze and evaluate the ideas from
your list and build them into a chronological plan of action.
Following are some general considerations you can use to determine a sequence
for your plan:
What financial shape is your company in? Does your company have adequate budget
resources to tackle big projects like new software or big changes in process, or is
money tight? Are sales looking bad or good?

By judging the overall financial state of your company, you may be able to rule out cer-
tain projects. For example, if your company’s sales picture looks bleak, and no budget
money is available right now, you can cross off the ideas that will cost a lot to imple-
ment. (New software and hardware will probably drop off the work plan immediately!)
How busy is your company? Is your company working at 100 percent capacity right
now, or do you have available personnel hours that you can use to make process
changes? Sometimes when a company is doing well, even if it wants to implement new
hardware or new software platforms or change processes and procedures, it may not
be able to because personnel are too busy trying to get work out the door. If this is the
case with your company, you can look through your list for the ideas that will be easi-
est to implement or that will take the least time to make happen. You’ll want to tackle
those projects first. Later, when the project load decreases, you can start working on
other items from your list.
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Conversely, if things are going fairly well in your company, but there’s some capacity
for people to put time into new efforts, you may want to look at ideas that are a little
more complex to implement and will require more process change. Those issues aren’t
so much a function of money as they are a function of available time and human
expertise required to analyze and make the changes. If time is available, those are the
things you can look at doing now.
What are the urgent needs? Does your company have obvious shortcomings in soft-
ware or hardware platforms that need to be addressed? If the answer is yes, then you’re
going to have to make an action plan to address those problems. If your company is
working on five-year-old software that’s already obsolete, or if vendors are unable to
receive files from you, you’ll have to take action; this will be a mission-critical task.
In a mission-critical technology adoption case, your challenge will be to think about
how you can use available time resources and available money resources to fix the
problem. This is probably the most difficult of all possible cases because, as the CAD

manager, you’re forced to make technology changes no matter what financial or time
constraints you have to operate under.
Does your company want to save money? Of course, the answer is yes. It really does-
n’t matter whether you’re busy, or whether finances are good or bad; everyone wants
to save money. If you can look at your idea list, find the items that generate the great-
est possible cost savings, and then use a second qualifier based on your company’s cir-
cumstances, you know that these are good items to put high on your work plan.
Figure 8.7 Sequencing ideas for optimal order involves sorting all ideas based on your company’s financial and time constraints.
Item #1
Least Cost
Resulting Order
Optimized
List Items
Sorting Method
Results
Item #2
Item #3
Item #4
Item #5
Least Complex
Time Savings
Ease of Use
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