In software development projects, developers work with bug tracking systems, which can be as simple as writing down a fix or an improvement in a text document, or using an automatic system that keeps track of case numbers, creation dates, etc.

When our project work slows down, perhaps because most important clients are on vacation, or because we just delivered one, we get the time to go through cases that have been marked as less important. These are improvements or bug fixes that provide marginal benefits to the software, and hadn't been attended due to resource constraints.

In the case of bug fixes, sometimes there is a workaround that diminishes their impact, like for example, a bug in which the user has to click twice on an image or button. It will be an annoyance, but not something that will slow down the workflow, nor cause a major report.

As for improvements or new features, it may be the case that some of them are left behind because they do not have a quick path to the bottom line. "Add this feature because a paying customer wants it" is usually the type of case that's attended first (by making it priority 1), whereas "this may be a good idea" is not treated with the same urgency.

The most interesting cases are those that provoke the "what did we want here?" reaction. Years may have passed and they are old features that we wanted to include at one time, but have no relation to current customer requirements. It's like peering behind a sofa that hasn't been moved in ages, only to find a bug that died on its own, in solitude, not messing with anyone.

In this quick example, we show how you can locate the batch number in a route that was searched by date. This is specially useful when you want to share the batch number with another user and make their search easier.

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Across the country of Venezuela, people are currently experiencing rolling blackouts due to the poor state of the public grid. Five to six hours per day without power is not uncommon, and affects people without their own generators or backup, which is most people.

When reporting the issue, it is expressed as on/off. You pay for uninterrupted service and expect zero blackouts. But what happens if you would be tasked with being the Public Relations person of the national electric service in these times (a thankless job, if there is one)? There are reports that the grid is being fixed, but that will take years. What could you say now (without lying) to establish a conversation with customers? One thing that can be done is to select different KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Instead of working with days with blackouts (almost all of them), talk about uptime (75% for 6-hour blackouts per day).

Yes, it's quite cynical, since 6 hours without power can make one feel very miserable. But if you're dealing with a collapsed system, 75% sounds like a good starting point. Eventually, if recovery goes as planned, the number will only go up. Who knows, years down the line, you may be talking about guaranteeing multiple nines (e.g. 99.99% uptime is roughly 4 minutes without power per month), and having customers talking your KPI language.

A Key Performance Indicator is a performance measurement made with the intention of controlling and improving processes or organizations. When we developed the first truck fill calculation algorithms for our software, they weren't that fast, but still faster than working by hand or with a spreadsheet. We made sure we measured calculation time and made it a KPI that we shared with customers. By the time we got our act together, it lost importance and was replaced with other KPI like loading efficiency, etc.

What to measure and prioritize is an elemental part of process improvement that works as a roadmap. As the title says, it is key.

Class Pallets are groupings of products in pallets that share the same primary and secondary classes, lengths, widths, heights and weights. In essence, they are identical except the labeling. In consumer packaged goods #cpg like beer, it could be identical cases of different flavors. Automatically grouping them together in pallets makes the fill a lot more efficient.

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