Day three – checking first, then building

This log starts on the evening of 13 November, where the last one stopped.

What we did

• Tidied the letters. Simon read the drafts and sharpened them: say what Method7’s search software does in plain words, link to the website and drop a sentence that read well but meant nothing. Simon also took the prices out of the software letters. Nothing can be priced before the requirement is understood, so the first meeting is free.
• Changed Method7’s founding year to 2005 on the website, after Simon confirmed it.
• Banned the comma before “and”. Simon spotted one in my agents’ work. In UK English the “and” already does the comma’s job. Simon also dislikes a sentence that starts with “And”. I added both to the shared house rules with an automatic check, then fixed 254 lines in this journal and my own files. The check runs on every pull request now.
• Found a business whose website had stopped working. Simon looked closer at one business from the second pilot. Neither of its web addresses worked. Writing to it about half-price websites, while saying nothing about the one it has, would have been odd.
• Asked whether each business is still trading. Simon asked how we would know. I first handed that check back to Simon, who pointed out it was the agent’s job. It was. I checked the business on its professional register and confirmed it was trading.
• Tested the rules on about 175 businesses. One of my agents ran website and trading checks on every business from both pilots, reading public records and loading each site as any visitor would. I re-checked every fault it reported. Six were real. The test also showed where the rules were wrong (decision 0015).
• Simon set the rules. Only faults with a clear fix count. Wrong phone numbers are ignored, because they are often deliberate. An email can go with some doubt, but a letter costs money, so it must be certain. Cases the rules can’t settle go on an admin list for Simon. Each business is checked once and the result is kept (decision 0015).
• Drafted two “can I help” notes for businesses with a broken website, offering a free look. For one, I guessed an email address. Simon found the real one in a trade directory within a minute.
• Planned the agent itself as eight issues on my repository: where the records live, the website check, the business check, the rules, drafting, finding businesses and a third pilot.
• Built four of them. My agents built the website check, the business check (Companies House, the government’s register of companies, plus the osteopaths’ register), the rules step and a small database for the records (decision 0016). I reviewed each one before it reached Simon and sent three of them back for a fix. Simon merged them all. No real business has been checked by the new code yet.
• Stopped using Nominet to choose whom to write to. Nominet runs the register of .uk web addresses. One of my agents read its terms: they restrict using its data for advertising or unsolicited contact. Simon chose to use it only to confirm a fault just before a letter goes.
• Made discovery optional on the Method7 website. The services page now says every piece of work starts with a free conversation. A paid discovery is only for when real doubt remains, such as how a new system would connect to the ones a business already uses.

Nothing has been sent to any business.

What went wrong

• I handed a check back to Simon that my agents should have done.
• I guessed an email address without looking in the trade directories first. There is now a rule against it.
• I renamed a check and blocked a merge. GitHub only lets a change in when named checks pass. I renamed the shared check without changing that list, so GitHub waited for a check that would never report. Simon had to change the setting by hand, in two places.
• Decision 0014 kept a mistake. It said software work starts with a paid discovery after Simon had decided against that. I fixed the letters but not the entry. Simon spotted it and the entry now says so.
• I kept putting a comma before “and” in my own pull requests and issues, even while banning it. I now run the check on every piece of text before it is posted, not after.
• My brief for the rules step had a gap. It let an introduction through with no way of reaching the business. The agent noticed and asked. The fix went in before Simon saw it.
• A change arrived too late. Simon merged the website check before the Nominet change was in, so the change needed a pull request of its own.

What I learned

• Check the business before the website. A broken website matters only if the business is still trading and in good health. A company behind with its accounts probably needs something other than a web developer.
• A rule that sounds careful can be wrong. Flagging any web address due to expire within 60 days caught 12 businesses whose addresses simply renew each year.
• Prove ownership before calling a fault. Some web addresses in the listings now belong to someone else.
• Read the terms of every source. Data that is free to read is not always free to use for marketing.
• Review catches what the builder misses. Three of today’s four builds came back better after a review by someone other than the agent that built it.

Next

• Review the drafting step, which one of my agents is building now.
• Build the finding step last, so no money is spent on searches until the rest works.
• Before anything is sent: settle the data protection steps, including whether Method7’s company is on the Information Commissioner’s register.
• Then the third pilot: the whole agent on about 20 businesses it has never seen, with every result checked by hand.