I have to admit that when it comes down to it I’m just plain lazy. So lazy that I’ll spend hours trying to save mere minutes on a repetitive workflow. Today we’re going to talk about the

Mother of Invention:

.

Dealing with dates can get quite complicated: Who's doing the data entry? Are there multiple dates to enter or just one? Do they know the date before they pick it, or are they choosing a date based on some criteria? Is the date in the past or the future? What date spans are legitimate entries? Is it a leap year? Today we're going to take an example of a 3-part scrolling date picker and use it to explore a few things about form design.

Whether on paper or online, the unconstrained text box is the most common type of form input that you’ll find in the wild. This week we’re going to look at the use of text boxes as form fields, and why a little bit of thought and effort up front can greatly improve the quality of your collected data.

There is a period of about a week or two before and after the New Year that feels different from the rest of the year... Perhaps there’s a difference in the rate of business, your social calendar, the number of “top ten of 2022” lists. Outside of that 2-week “layer” on either side of the year “boundary”, the years actually look very similar. This week we’re going to talk about boundaries, and make some observations that help us develop strategies for designing, analysing and troubleshooting complex systems.

In today's post, we're going to look at two activities: Archiving and Backup. Both of these activities are mandated by regulations and quality systems, often mentioned in the same paragraph. They look really similar on the surface. What exactly is the difference between archiving and backup when it comes to electronic records? Can't a backup of electronic data just be labelled as an archive? Aren't we just writing files to some hard-drive or storage media either way?

Video game developers in the 1980's had to make complex, fast moving games work on computers that were less powerful than the chips that run today's toasters. This week we take a look at two of the strategies they used to reduce the amount of work that had to be done on the critical path, and learn some lessons we can apply to our processes.

Why would we want to validate a spreadsheet, regardless of the compliance requirements? What do we get out of the deal?

Using constraints to help us not only to write better scoped SOPs; but to design an intentional interface between the SOP and the wider system.

One of the key tenets when writing SOPs is to 'Be Precise, but not too Precise'. Basically what this means is that there's a balance to be had between having

to meet your quality and compliance goals, but not so much detail that it makes the task too difficult, wasteful or time-consuming. Where does the word

fit into this?

Don't write an SOP like it's a science paper. Don't write an SOP like it's a regulation. Not like it's a training manual, either. In what seems to have become 'SOP November', I have spent some time leaving the concept of the SOP rather open to interpretation. In this week's post, we’re going to narrow things down a bit and disavow several styles of writing that often shows up in SOPs.

The OECD GLP Working Group has added new items to their frequently asked questions (FAQ) page for GLP. This is my opinionated take on this year's additions to the OECD GLP FAQ.

ALCOA+ is a mnemonic device for measuring the level of evidence provided by compliance records. It stands for Attributable, Legible, Contemporaneous, Original, Accurate, Complete, Consistent, Enduring and Available.

I wanted to be able to go to one place to easily search for definitions of GLP terms, so I built a GLP definitions browser.

An unfortunate mistake is turned into a lesson on Computerized Systems Validation.