MEGO. You've experienced it – we all have. It sneaks up on you. You're talking with a technology-savvy colleague, who breaks into geek talk, and you think, "I am not understanding a word he says! Maybe I'll just fake it and nod knowingly." But you can't really fake it – your eyes betray you. That's a common reaction – My Eyes Glaze Over, or MEGO.

This month's e-update features a case study involving a lot of great technology! But I don't want MEGO to happen to you. So, I've tried to construct this case study to feature only enough "behind the scenes" technical stuff to help tell the story.

Distilling the Essence of a Project

And the story is really about how our consultants jumped in the foxhole (see: In the Foxhole – THA e-update November 2009 ) with our client when no one else would. Not their system vendor, not their value added network provider, no one.

Once a project is completed and presented in a case study format, it all seems so tidy and simple – that's only because someone worked very hard to distill its essence. To really appreciate just how hard this project was, take a look at the lettered graphics. Imagine trying to write the rules and translations to create Item B, having only a few instances of Item A and Item C. Looking at all the bits and bytes is tedious. Developing the logic and program code to reliably and consistently generate them is even more so.

So when the case study says "The final specifications documents were iteratively developed by trial-and-error", understand that at least 5 iterations were required to develop each specifications document – and over 74 specifications documents were created during this project.

Never Forget the Purpose

While our consultants are comfortable immersing themselves in a project's technical details, they never forget our purpose – to get business results by using technology and improving processes, as practiced for over 20 years. Our consultants work hard to avoid inflicting MEGO on client personnel, by minimizing geek speak and technical jargon.

Oh – the technology we developed to automatically receive, parse, translate, and interface inbound EDI transactions (and similarly handle the outbound transactions) is really cool, too. Explaining that would most definitely cause MEGO, so I'll spare you.

Sincerely,