Hi everyone! I’ve got a question about some guys at work who are pitching that we need a server. This is mostly a sanity check, but I’m pretty sure they’re full of shit
The law firm I work for uses a CRM that doesn’t have an open API. This is important. You can access a daily updated copy of your data from an S3 bucket with an API, but it’s essentially read-only for that reason.
They said they want to set up a server for the firm for " automation" using n8n. We can’t use n8n because it doesn’t have a native integration with our CRM. They also set up Dropbox for the firm (prior to my time starting) and the firm pays for OneDrive with Microsoft suite already…
Then they said they want local ai for automation so they’ll
“Just put a 5070ti in there” For an ai agent for the entire 15-20 person firm. They also never specified what said ai would do. I also think it’s completely not viable
Then they said all 3 locations can just use tailscale to access the server simultaneously. All of these people minus me and one other are completely non-technical. I help them restart Excel once a week non-technical.
I cannot possibly think of a viable use case for what they’re describing. Am I cinical or are they just looking to make some cash off whatever project they don’t know anything about?
Then I would absolutely share your concerns. If you can’t share the value proposition clearly with the owner in your own words, then it will reflect poorly on you when this goes sideways with negative results. IMO you don’t even need to say no. Just say, “there’s no way I can explain this clearly to <owner> with what you’ve told me so far. I can’t sell a plan I don’t understand and I don’t have enough details to understand the steps here. Let’s write this down in a document that we can go back and forth on to get the details right that I can share with others.” Then make some suggestions for them to do the leg work.
Before any hardware or software gets built or acquired it can be helpful to go through some exercises. Probably the most helpful here:
Business Requirements Document (BRD) - stakeholders, business constraints, goals. Should sell the idea “we need to do something here because it’s important to the business for XYZ reasons”.
Product Requirements Document (PRD) - Critical User Journies (CUJ), user stories, use case analysis. Should iron out how a solution should look like to achieve the stated goals of the business doc. Specify success criteria, what metrics are important for this to be a success “we saved staff X hours, we cut costs Y dollars, we brought in Z new clients”.
Technical Specification or Technical Design Doc (TDD). Should explain how to achieve CUJs through a technical design. Focus should be both “why” to do it this way AND “why not” do it some other way. Tradeoff analysis.
Then there are a dozen related drill-downs exercises: legal review, security/privacy/compliance review, internationalization, launch review, UX review, on and on. They all serve a common goal: get everyone on the same page. You don’t need to contort what your are doing into any of the above, but it’s just kind of evolved into these aspects because it’s so difficult to get everyone on the same page.
Again, I’m not saying adopt all of the above, but if you don’t have the technical knowledge then your role is closer to a project manager and that is its own set of skills. It’s very helpful when PMs have some technical background (so absolutely continue enjoying Homelab hobbies), but (from a random internet stranger’s POV) here you need to wear a project manager hat.
Good luck!