Infrastructure - Enabler of a Higher Productivity


by Hans Bool - Date: 2007-01-31 - Word Count: 362 Share This!

...We know infrastructure from such basic things as gas, water and electricity. They have always been there and they are so basic that you do not know what to do when it is not there...

But there are other infrastructural elements much closer to home, think about the maintenance of your website and the role of an infrastructure. This is not about hosting but the simple use of a style sheet, the small css-file a template which is used by all other web pages. Infrastructure is doing just that providing a business with the right structure that serves the rest. The structure in itself has no functional use other than providing order, stability, flexibility and perhaps some other supporting aspects that provide help.

A style sheet is a very simple mechanism to introduce to your website, but think about it when you do not use it. Think about the maintenance you need if you want to change the layout of your pages. You want to use different colors, different headings, you want to introduce margins on all your pages. Without style sheets this last change - in margins - may cost you five (5) minutes to change each page and another five to test the page. For a site of 100 pages you would need 1000 minutes (16 hours). With the use of a style sheet you need only ten to fifteen minutes...

Thinking about this you may conclude that everybody would embrace this infrastructural effort. Design a style sheet only once and use it through the design, development and maintenance of your site. Yet even style sheets or other infrastructural components are not always welcomed and that has a reason. Infrastructure is used by everybody and "everybody" will need a say in the process. It is often difficult to align the preferences within a group and it is more difficult if the infrastructure covers more organizational units.

Yet, you know that a sound infrastructure will help all contributors in the process. Just think about the simple style sheet and try to embrace infrastructural developments during existing or new projects. Infrastructure increases the productivity of the group, to achieve this, the individual needs to contributes.

© 2007 Hans Bool


Related Tags: productivity, higher, infrastructure, enabler

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management tools. Have a look at some of our free management tools

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