For the last three years, I have been working on a project to bring together all the disparate systems we employ here, to simplify the task of the user and to try and ensure that when someone is off, another person can pick up the threads. Oh, the system was supposed to do much much more than this, but out of all the features I had planned, the documenting and recording of what was happening in a Case was the most important to me.
As usual, I put myself in the position of having to do the job, and I really really dislike not having enough information to hand to do a job. I don’t like not knowing what the previous person has done or agreed or been discussing. I don’t like having to wade in without the full picture, exposing myself and the company to unnecessary risk. I then put myself in the shoes of the actual customer, and decided that this stance I was taking would vastly benefit them too. No-one likes to have to explain themselves over and over and over, to different people, none of whom have the foggiest about my situation or what has been promised me.
But in order to improve people’s recording of this information, you have to provide a measurable benefit to the recorder. When you are busy, it is often difficult to make time to write down the minutiae of a discussion, and of course you will remember all the details, so what’s the point?
As a developer, I see people’s faces become stony when you start talking about ‘typing up notes’ or ‘logging calls’: “I simply don’t have time to do that.” So what I try to do is to work out how I can save them time in other places, or make it easy and natural to record more information. If you can create that email in the application, and have it save back to the notes, attached to the addressee and the case, that achieves my objective, and theirs. Little things like that can make all the difference to the perceived success of your application.
I’m in a slightly unusual position here in that I’m the systems analyst as well as the developer. I’m not just writing the code, I’m trying to change the world (for my users at least!). The two roles do conflict at times. With my user advocate hat on, I want the best from the user experience, I want the application to be a delight and to solve all the niggly interface problems that grind away at your morale (never underestimate the cost to your business of unusable or badly-written software). But the developer has a deadline, the developer has to provide all these features in an often unreasonable timescale. Functionality has to come before delight. In this crossfire, is where projects get abandoned.
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