Bag of Tricks; the advantages of building a library of reusable solutions

Every contractor knows that their job is easier if they don't have to re-invent the wheel every time they start a new contract, and that experience is a valuable marketable asset in the scramble to find work.



However, it's not always realised just how much of an impact on the 'top line' can derive from formalising the principles of a successful solution into a reusable, transferable set of 'patterns' applicable to similar and related future contracts.



Pattern matching and its companion discipline anti-patterning are well-documented skills in some areas of IS work, principally design and development. However, patterns can as easily be found in human activities and operational problems as in subroutines – obviously so, as those subroutines are nothing more than a model in fine detail of the interactions required to meet a user's needs in the completion of a particular task.



The impact of successful pattern matching – using the 'bag of tricks', in other words – on a contractor's income can be twofold. Most straightforwardly, it helps to shortcut some of the drudgework of the project, supporting the production of high-quality quotes and specifications that the contractor can be confident avoid common pitfalls and chart a reliable path to the required destination. Contracts can be completed more quickly and efficiently; more work can be achieved in the same amount of time; and the likelihood of return business is increased.



More abstractly, though, it can provide a competitive advantage in the design of a solution; mapping a client's requirements onto tried and tested patterns can help identify the golden balance of effort against return that represents the ideal marriage of a client's resources to their customers' likely requirements.



Online sales systems that provide just the right amount of incentive to up-spend are often quoted as an example; pattern matching allows the system's design to strike the ideal balance between the customer's willingness to impulse-buy and the availability of desirable extras, services and accessories related to the product they originally came to purchase.



The key to capitalising on the transferable knowledge in a project is to be able to see past the specifics of the project to its fundamental structure. During the project and at its conclusion, make efforts to state the problem and the details of your solution in generic terms, stripping out the specifics of the task. You'll see that (to take an example from my own area, systems design) a person buying a late-booking discounted holiday via on online system and an automated forklift picking an order share more in common than might at first be obvious – each has an entry point into the system, a goal, a set of objectives, a set of failure and success conditions, a set of required inputs and outputs.



Distil personalities to uncover forces at work on the objective – operational, administrative, strategic and financial priorities have to be measured and balanced and (so pattern-matching theory goes) once the correct balance is discovered, it will be applicable to any future problem with the same fundamental structure.



Above all, make use of the 'teachable moments' in the project; at each milestone, look back over your plans and working methods and ask what worked and what didn't, what underperformed and what was a surprise success. Document the results of this review and cross-reference it to your previous notes to ensure that your 'bag of tricks' grows organically as your career progresses.



Every contractor worth their salt learns from past experience and brings that knowledge to bear on their future work. With a little creativity and a methodical approach, however, the value of that experience can be increased manifold to the point where it has a measurable and ongoing effect on the contracting income top line – and that can only be a good thing.



Doug Brett-Matthewson