Have a look at these two grids. Can you see any similarities between them?

Grid A

Grid B

Obvious

First, some pretty obvious facts:

1. Grid A is 5 x 7 cells and Grid B is 7 x 5 cells

3. Both grids contain 35 cells

4. Grid A has a clear pattern – hard to miss!

5. Grid B looks kind of random

Not so obvious

Now look a bit deeper and count the X’s. There are 7 in each grid. Hmmm…..

To cut a long story short (which by the way is an excellent song by Spandau Ballet), counting from top-left to bottom-right in each grid, every fifth cell has an X in it.

The point is that it is the exact same information in each grid, but one representation shows a clear pattern and the other looks random and meaningless. The further point, naturally, is that when you are looking at your application estate spread sheets and databases, you might be looking at the Grid B version of the data, not Grid A. Could you be missing some simplicity just because you are looking at things the ‘wrong’ way?

Tools and agents that gather reams of estate information might seem to be useful, but it’s not the tools that you should be looking at – it’s the information they collect and present which should concern you most. At Camwood we deal with Information through Technology, not just ‘Information Technology’. Do you?

Have a ponder!