Edge cases are the key to understanding system behavior. First, we should start by defining what an edge case is for those not up on systems. An edge case is any scenario where the state changes.
For example in travel, traveling a highway has multiple scenarios:
- Travelling between cities in the same area (soft edges)
- Travelling across state lines (soft edges)
- Travelling between countries (hard edge)
Edges are anything that causes the conditions of operations to change. It’s easy to test static conditions: does this system work on Windows XP, 7, 10, MacOS, ChromeOS, iOS and Android? That’s a yes/no condition. Understanding whether the system still works on each of those while switching internet connections between providers and resubmitting credentials is a much harder scenario to test.
In real estate, we have a few common edge cases that are important to think about:
- How do you operate your largest and smallest offices? It’s easy to manage the average office, the ones on the extreme are more difficult.
- How do you handle your highest growth office?
- Are your processes different for offices where the CEO sits?
- Do offices perform better when closer to the business or further away?
- Which day of the week has peak occupancy of your offices?
Thinking through what happens at these boundary conditions allows you to pressure test your solutions. Have you really thought through everything you need to? Are you handling your risks appropriately? Do you have a plan for dealing with best case/worst case scenarios?