Read the data, fix the system, ship the tool

The phrase has surfaced in every job I’ve taken, in slightly different language. At Ghana Health Service in 2017, it meant building data-quality processes for clinic intake. At the German Institute, it meant teaching the same pattern to 200 analysts across eight countries. At Infinedi, it meant identity-resolution pipelines for claims data. At Closeout, it’s the entire product.

I think it keeps working because each phase produces something the next phase needs. Reading the data tells you what the system is actually doing wrong — which is usually not what people say it’s doing wrong. Fixing the system surfaces what the tool would need to do to make the fix permanent. The tool, when it ships, gives the next person a place to read more data than you could.

The bug in the phrase is that it suggests a sequence. In practice the three move at once: you read the data with the tool you’re shipping; you fix the system because the data you’re reading tells you what’s broken. The point is they’re the same job.