Despite the fact that some ProAdvisors recently looked at me like they had never even heard the term 'differential diagnosis' applied to QuickBooks (Desktop), I assured them that I had in fact not only written on the subject several times but also presented about 6 months of Woodard Monthly Member 'Murph Moment' Segments on the topic. (Well actually it would have been NAN then, that was before the group started being called 'Woodard'.)
Differential diagnosis of QuickBooks Performance is not too different from diagnosing the health of a patient (although your state medical board will think otherwise). As a ProAdvisor you are frequently called upon to diagnose where the bottlenecks are that are causing data to slow-down, become sluggish, and in severe cases (just like in heart failure) fail. With that understanding, let’s look how we can use standard ‘differential diagnostics’ to evaluate QuickBooks performance.
Differential Diagnosis is all about ruling-in and ruling-out the possibilities, it requires questions, listening skills, deductive reasoning, testing, test interpretation and most of all patience.
My own ‘cardiologist’ is featured in a television commercial saying “if you just take the time to listen to the patient, they will eventually tell you what is really happening with them….”. ProAdvisors all too often listen to that initial Chief Complaint and then rush right in trying to figure out what is wrong without taking the time to really listen for what is happening.
ProAdvisors all too often listen to that initial Chief Complaint and then rush right in trying to figure out what is wrong without taking the time to really listen for what is happening, or taking the proper steps to assess, analyze and diagnose the real situation (condition).
Differential Diagnosis Re-visited Part 1
In the first stage of solving any mystery, whether it’s a murder mystery or something you expected to work (like QuickBooks) but didn’t, you have to eliminate all the things that it couldn’t possibly be, or you will have too many distractions.
Once we clear out all the distractions, we can focus on what remains. Sometimes what is left is easy to believe, other times it can seem highly improbable. However, with the impossible eliminated, what remains are the only possible solutions. And one of them must be the truth.
Differential Diagnosis Re-visited Fig 2
Despite the fact that QuickBooks is a relatively stable program, the application, the database and your data are all subject to errors. Intuit’s efforts to improve the stability and redundancy of QuickBooks has not eliminated errors, in fact errors frequently pop-up in random periods of significant impact users as evidenced by QuickBooks forum users posting questions directly related to errors within the application, within their data, or regarding performance.
One frequent error reported by users is "QuickBooks just crashed", or "QuickBooks just froze-up and stopped working." In medicine this would equate to what physicians call 'the Chief Complaint.' It's similar to when a patient would tell their doctor, "I have a bad cough."
But a Physician doesn't immediately jump to conclusions when someone tells them they "have a bad cough". He doesn't tell them in the first 30 seconds that they must have lung cancer, or emphysema, or pulmonary edema. No the Doctor goes through a detailed process of analysis and testing before he ever reaches a diagnosis.
To a Physician 'the Chief Complaint' is just a starting point, he proceeds on during his consultation by determining other specific areas for evaluation including the patient's:
- Symptoms,
- Medical History, and
- Measurable Signs
The Patient's Symptoms might include 'shortness of breath, dizziness upon exertion, or weakness' The patient might report that they 'coughed up some greenish sputum' or maybe even 'a little blood.'
The Physician would want to know if the patient had a medical history of any major underlying condition like heart disease or diabetes. But beyond this general history there would be inquiries into contributory history like "do you smoke", or "have you ever worked around asbestos or noxious chemicals?"
In terms of the patient's measurable signs a variety of tests might reveal that the patient has 'a resting pulse rate of 140 per minute', or a 'blood pressure of 80/40'. The Doctor might order an electrocardiogram and the EKG might show 'an elevated S-T segment'. In addition the Physician might order a chest X-ray or even an MRI or CT of the chest/lungs. In some cases the Doctor might even order a 'bronchoscopy'.
Physicians use all of this information to help them 'deferentially diagnose' a a patent's condition. Too help them analyze properly, medical schools teach differential diagnosis with the aid of flow-charts. One example of such a flow-chart for 'persistent cough' (aka: a bad cough) is shown below.
Differential Diagnosis Revisited 03
This is a relatively simplistic flow-chart, but many are much more complex because they include the various 'Yes or No' responses for each of the analytical steps and all of the possibilities associated with each. Still the same this example should give us the idea that as ProAdvisors we should be taking the same basic approach when dealing with QuickBooks problems.
Therefore I pose the following question to you, "Why shouldn't we apply the same 'basic principles' of Differential Diagnosis when evaluation QuickBooks problems and performance?"
Well, if you believe that we should, then obviously you will want to check-in for our next installment (Part 2) of 'Differential Diagnosis Re-visitied'.