Defrag Blog

While we’re now hard at work on Glue, (and - yes - you should come) that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped thinking about Defrag. In fact, a few weeks back, I found myself putting some pieces together between World of Warcraft and Defrag.

For those of you that don’t know, I have a World of Warcraft (WoW) problem. As with most folks that play WoW, there’s a certain level of addiction that sets in over time. I have my friends (and the folks that do web design for Defrag and Glue) to “thank” for getting me into WoW — and it’s now a pretty good bet that I invest (spend, blow?) anywhere between 5 and 25 hours per week online playing my much-beloved warlock, Kalevra.

In any case, in WoW (for those that haven’t played), you can run around doing various things - with one of the main components being “quests.” Quests are basically tasks you have to complete to “level” (level 80 is currently the highest level for a player). The thing about quests is that they can be very time consuming in that you have to find and complete them across various expanses of land (often unexplored), using different tools and things for completion. Quests can be as simple as “kill 10 of these things,” or as complex as a 23 quest story line that eventually leads you into some wonderful state of WoW bliss.

WoW, in all of their goodness, has an open API that lets third party programmers build “add-ons” to bring additional functionality to the game. One of which is Questhelper. Questhelper provides an overlay on the WoW maps that shows you exactly where to go on a quest. Further, it tells you what to do when you get there, AND (most importantly) if you’re running multiple quests (which you always are) moves you through obtaining things in the most efficient manner possible.

All of which got me to wondering: is there any similar tool in the enterprise?

I can imagine a “questhelper” (workflow helper? task helper?) running in an enterprise setting that directs someone working on a specific task on the most efficient route for completion.

I have no idea how this would work, or if this would work, but I can certainly imagine a “questhelper” running on a corporate intranet — directing me to the right tools and people to accomplish what I’m up to in the most efficient manner possible.

Is there anything out there that’s doing this well right now?

If you’ve been following the Defrag blog, then I’m hoping you’ve also heard about our new conference - Glue.

Be sure to check out the first draft of the agenda - specifically, this new blog post about it. And don’t forget to register.