The following rule is known in the software development business:

An error caught in the specification stage costs $1 to fix. If caught during development, it costs $10 to fix - during testing $100 - after deployment, $1,000.

Active communication, combined with persistent history of files, and encouraged by a near-zero-overhead process helps to keep things on track and expose problems sooner. It avoids such horrible numbers. The same analogy applies to business projects, to all kind of projects where people work together to reach a joint goal. If you have the mis in communication things are getting expensive, fast.

ROI Examples

Automatic Versioning

In this scenario we assume, that our group is working on a project and needs to track customer documents, own documents to create an RFP response. The presentation needs to be acknowledged by upper management. Further different versions have to be created, management summaries, customer answers with/without backup information etc.

• Handling emails with attachements & storing, accessing attachements on project server: 10 minutes a day
• Clearifiying current document version and state: 5 minutes per day
• Searching older versions & screen them to go back to last-good-known-state: 5 minutes per day

This sums up in our case to:

Closed Communication System

Our project group needs to work out a solution in a team with different skills. The team is distributed at different locations. There are ad-hoc questions coming up.

• Handling emails, categorizing them, filtering CCed mails, fighting spam: 10 minutes a day
• Waiting for answers from working groups hence work delay: 10 minutes a day
• Effort to schedule team sync meetings, team meetings: 20 minutes a day

This sums up in our case to: