Random Thoughts from Last Week - More vendor stuff
Some random thoughts over the past few business days:
- Had an interesting discussion with the techs last week. The
end users are complaining about "data entry speed" for their "heads
down typing".
Now, the techs have worked in multiple organizations, and have a pretty
strong, generic, and correct definition of what constitutes "heads down
typing" - data entry at a much higher rate than our user
base experiences. Still, when the user tells you they are doing "heads
down typing", the correct answer is _not_ to disagree on the
definition, but try to figure out a bit more specifically what the
issue is.
- The operations group does terrific process documentation here,
but like all organizations, nobody loves doing it. Most of the time,
you can tell these authors get up a head of steam and do great levels
of detail in the beginning, and less later. the document we reviewed
last week started out with "Remove PC from box, plug in cables, power
on", etc., but by the end the process steps were getting terse and
unhelpful ("Apply VBA Patch").
Key things to think about when documenting - understand your audience
(don't write above or below them), and keep things consistent.
- Another
vendor,
another minor peeve. A Sarbox
collaboration / document management tool whose demo focused on software
features like check in/out, publishing, etc. but did not relate the
features to business process or benefit. And please, don't talk to me
about intuitive user interface - their are too many variables and too
many interesting users out there to make any one interface totally
intuitive.
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