It’s funny where you pick up great insights. I was watching a national gardening program and one of the winners of their annual Gardener Of The Year prize was asked by the host how she succeeded in building such an amazing garden. Her answer floored me…

I just keep improving the worst part.

Well it seems obvious now, to the point of making me feeling a bit sheepish. I love this bit of wisdom. It fits the Saasu philosophy of simplifying life so perfectly. Why waste time deciding where to focus, there are so many forks to take.

It is a different approach, there could be inefficiencies. When landscapers build gardens they get the volume discount on time and effort. For example, if you are landscaping an entire garden at once you’ll need less waste skips and get more efficiency into the big clearing and weeding exercise. You can create inefficiencies through not doing things in bulk. My first business I owned as a teenager was a landscaping business and I learnt this lesson quickly.

So do the potential advantages outweigh the disadvantages in your business?

I think you have to list them and evaluate. As an example in our web application business:

• It would have us concentrate on one thing at a time.
• It would lower communication burden.
• Including lowering interruptions. See my post called Business Interruptus
• As a result the documentation and email levels might drop.
• Mapping dependencies and impacts on other parts of the business would be simpler.
• If we were looking for one thing to improve/add we would be much more picky about it.
• It would mean shorter periods between releases.
• The management time expense could drop if you believe multiple parallel projects suck management time. I certainly do!

What would this approach do for your business, your product, your daily time allocation for work or family?