Copy-pasting individual items into a spreadsheet
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2025 9:37 am
Manually adding columns on the fly as they thought of categories.
Trying to extract information from free-form text, often inconsistently.
Typing out repetitive data for common elements.
Missing connections between related list items.
This approach was slow, introduced human errors, and led to data that was difficult to query, analyze, or integrate with other systems.
The Turning Point: A Focused Intervention
We dedicated a specific block of time – whether it was an intensive single day sprint, a focused week-long initiative, or a more gradual month-long project – to overhaul this process. Our approach was systematic:
Phase 1: Diagnosis & Goal Setting (Day 1 / Week 1 / Month 1 - Initial Days)
Identify the Worst Offenders: We listed the top 2-3 types of lists that caused the most pain (e.g. brother cell phone list "customer verbatim feedback," "new feature requests," "bug reports").
Define the "Ideal State": For each problematic list type, we sketched out exactly what the final, structured data should look like. What columns did we need? What data types? What were the allowable values for each category? (e.g., [Feedback ID, Original Comment, Sentiment, Feature Category, Priority, Action Item, Date]).
Quantify the Pain: We estimated the time lost, errors made, and delayed decisions due to our current inefficient process. This helped us build a strong case for dedicating resources to the improvement.
Trying to extract information from free-form text, often inconsistently.
Typing out repetitive data for common elements.
Missing connections between related list items.
This approach was slow, introduced human errors, and led to data that was difficult to query, analyze, or integrate with other systems.
The Turning Point: A Focused Intervention
We dedicated a specific block of time – whether it was an intensive single day sprint, a focused week-long initiative, or a more gradual month-long project – to overhaul this process. Our approach was systematic:
Phase 1: Diagnosis & Goal Setting (Day 1 / Week 1 / Month 1 - Initial Days)
Identify the Worst Offenders: We listed the top 2-3 types of lists that caused the most pain (e.g. brother cell phone list "customer verbatim feedback," "new feature requests," "bug reports").
Define the "Ideal State": For each problematic list type, we sketched out exactly what the final, structured data should look like. What columns did we need? What data types? What were the allowable values for each category? (e.g., [Feedback ID, Original Comment, Sentiment, Feature Category, Priority, Action Item, Date]).
Quantify the Pain: We estimated the time lost, errors made, and delayed decisions due to our current inefficient process. This helped us build a strong case for dedicating resources to the improvement.