From observations to a table

You have collected ten customer cases. How do you store the information? In a table.

Case	Type	Status	Channel
1	Invoice	Open	Email
2	Delivery	Closed	Phone
3	Invoice	Open	Web

Each row is a case. Each column is a property you have recorded. Only once the data is in a table can it be filtered, sorted, and analysed.

Try this: Collect ten items from your work or home (e.g. invoices, emails, purchases). Decide on three columns before you start — for example, type, status, and source.

The hard part is choosing the columns. Too few: you cannot answer questions later. Too many: you will not have the energy to fill them in. Ask yourself: what questions do I want to be able to answer later? The columns should cover those.

A computer does exactly the same thing before it «learns» anything — the columns become what it looks at.