Users are stubborn

[Wanda Tucker]

RE: Users are stubborn

Hi Martin,
Very good points - great minds think alike ;)

I pride myself in making my applications user-friendly in all the ways you describe. In fact, I got very positive feedback about the database, itself. The problem is that they are whining about putting in all the back data - not having the time to do so.

All fields are necessary, as they pertain to what the state is wanting from us (Social Services). I didn't add anything that wasn't necessary that they HAVE to use, although i did throw in a "letter writer" form, and a few reports that they could use in-house if they wanted. So in this respect the "look" of it could be overwhelming to some people.

Maybe at the next conference some of us can present one of our applications simply for feedback and constructive criticism...the "look/feel" of it, whether or not there are surpurfluous things that maybe shouldn't be included, etc.

Anyhow, all but one of the FRC's want to use the application, but feel they just can't manage to get all the back data in...The one who doesn't want to use it at all does, in fact, fall into the category of having an application do far more than they need it to. This intimidates them, I think.

I had to design one application for the 5 seperate FRC's, but maybe I can tailor theirs down a bit. ill have to ask the powers that be.

Thanks, Martin

[Wanda Tucker]

RE: Users are stubborn

Great success story, Robert :)

I'm printing bits and pieces of this thread for when I get to speak with my supervisor tomorrow or the next day and will include part of yours...
I gotta run out of here - will be back tomorrow.

Caio!
Wanda

[Tom Henkel]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda,
Just to go along with using the unemployed, we have a program here in NJ called "Community Worh Employability Program", CWEP, where we use Assistance recipients who, in exchange for their benefits, they must "work" for a minimum of 20 hours per week. We have and continue to utilize this "Free" source of labor.

As you are a government agency, this might be available to you.

Tom

[glenschild]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda

A phrase I once heard:

Managers manage
Developers develop
Workers do as they are told!

Now in theory that should be it but as has already been said, you can lead a horse to water.......

If the managers are sold on the concept and can see the benefits then it becomes their job to sell the concept and benefits to the persons doing the data entry.

The adage "what's in it for me?" is so vital. If they can answer that themselves then they will do the data entry.

Regards

Glen Schild

[Tom Henkel]

RE: Users are stubborn

Check that,

its "Community Work Experience Program", not Employability.

The purpose of the program is to give assistance recipients actual work experience so that they can be bette prepared for a job when they go out to look for one.


Tom

[Pat Bremkamp]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda,

Do you know how to eat a whale???

One bite at a time.

The other offices are using the excuse that the entire whale is too big to eat. So, the only way to get the job done is for them to take it a bite at a time. Ask them how much back data they have time for...one day, one week, one month? Then, set targets for entering last week, last month, the previous month.

Also, I have to ask, why do they need the back data at all? Cant they just make do with from now on?

Good luck,
Pat

[Blake]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda,

Well, no good news here.

1. I once wrote a simple program that saved technicians about 15-20 per job, and guaranteed accurate entry. (It read instrument readings off a disk and stuffed them into a database, preventing the user from having to enter them.) The user cost of this system? One keypress. They had to press a key--ANY KEY--after running the job in order to ensure the data got from one place to another. In that circumstance, I was ordered to turn the system off.

2. I once wrote a more complex program to capture data from any source (web-site, remote database, text file on a floppy, whatever). The business regarded this data as their most important data (contact info for sales), and after about two months of this running, and them seeing the positive results, they turned it off because it embarrassed a consulting company they used.

And these are just two of the many, many stories I could tell. It doesn't always come out this way, but the bottom-line is: you can't combat politics with technology.

It all comes down to whether or not you have the necessary support. If you do, you can accomplish anything. If you don't, you can't. Sometimes you can get support where you don't have it by talking to the Guy In Charge, and sometimes you can deal directly with the users and show them the benefit of what you're doing.

But without support from somewhere, you're just aggravating your carpal tunnel syndrome.

[mronck]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda,

Here are my two cents on the subject:

I have been forced to deal with this kind of problems hundreds of times. So maybe I can be of any help to you.

First of all, one of the basic skills you need for this profession is not to be encouraged easily. Be patient and confident. You most of the time do not convince anyone to your point of view by losing confidence.

I mostly look users in the face in this kind of situations, because a lot of small, easy to solve problems have almost always gone before that.
I can see from 100 meters in the face of the user what his attitude towards my solution is.
Because that is the problem.
They resent either computers as a total or just your solution, for various reasons.
And then they start to resist it.
Not mentioning the real reason why they are driven to the resistance, they are often not even aware of their attitude.

Most of the time I use the example of the man that lives in City A and works 200km further in City B.
He has only a bike and has to cycle from A to B every day.
Someone suggested he should take driving lessons and buy a car. He declined: "I don't have the time to take driving lessons. Don't you know I have to cycle 200km's every day? Don't you have ANY idea howmuch time this costs?".

See the analogy to your situation ?

Back to practical solutions to your problem:

1- Make a good presentation in powerpoint about what the problems are without your app and what the advantages of your app are. Make an investment plan that shows how the investments in software and time will pay-off to shut up "the man with the bicycle". Include investments in entering backward data but think of point 2 and 3!

2- I do not know how it is in the USA, but in our country we have "students on workplacement". Look for educational institutes that are searching for places in the kind of institute you are working for. Implement them into your plan. This is benefitual to both sides: the students can be involved into the project to learn, you get "cheap labour" in return that just can make the difference in your budget.

3- Connect with the accounting staff of your client. Have them challenged to calculate a finance plan to cover your investment plan. Introduce your solution as a "total solution". Do not leave huge parts of your solution to be solved by others that probably are not willing to.
Example: you come up with a great information solution. Costs $10.000. Reaction: No way in hell that we can afford this! Plan down the drain with 1 simple sentence, without being explored all options properly. Problem gone for the opposing person. He does not have to invest the time, the problem was one someone else's desk anyway.....

Be aware of political structures in your clients organisation that can work against you. Explore them during the intake-stage. Talk to people. Map the mainstream of thoughts and the opposing ones before presenting the solution half and giving opportunity to kill it easely.

Hope this will help.

Kind regards and greetings from Holland,

Marcel

[rtbtat]

RE: Users are stubborn

To Robert Gowan:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your story, it reminded me of a somewhat similar experience that occurred when I worked for the federal government.

Back around 1988, I developed an Internal Affairs Database using a program called RBASE. In 1995 or 96, management decided it was time to switch over to Windows and they focused upon an off the shelf Internal Affairs database program that cost $10,000 [a lot of money 9 years ago].

As an employee of the agency, I offered to build a customized windows version in Alpha Five [ver 1?]. The commander of the unit asked how much A5 cost [it was only $100 to upgrade since we were already using A5 for other projects].Do you know what he told me?

He had a meeting with his supervisor and both of them came to the conclusion that since the off the shelf product cost $10,000 it must be far superior to Alpha Five. That was their decision and the guys who handled investigations quickly learned to hate the new product. It was complicated, updates/changes took a long time, plus they were very expensive. And worst of all, instead of buying a customized A5 database designed to work in their unique style, they had to adapt some of their work habits to comply with the off the shelf model.

As for Wanda's problem, I quickly learned in the federal government [plus city, county, and state], people are terrified of change. It doesn't matter how much a change improves the quality of work, they will resist it to the very last moment, the true mark of a bureaucrat.

Robert

[Melvin Davidson]

RE: Users are stubborn

Wanda,

First with regards to the parties [must be a party, not enough time to work :) ], that don't want to enter the data, make sure you document everything as an official notify to your snoopervisor. I would send it as an email with a CC: to Mr. Big, so that there is a record of it. Then when your snoopervisor starts to blame things of you (and he or she will), you will have a way to defend yourself.

Now as to the files that keep having there extensions removed, I agree someone (or something) other than A5 must be doing it. Is it all files that have extensions removed, or possibly just the .set definitions. Believe it or not, I recently had my computer upgrade at work and then has to explain to someone why all those .sex extensions had nothing to do with porn. I suspect someone may have found those and decided to handle with a wildcard rename of everytihng with .se*. Well, that's my conspiracy theory anyway.

Good luck,
Melvin

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Users are stubborn

Blake

Since we are sharing stories, here is another one. A company I worked at spent 6 months and considerable money to install their first computerized point of sale system. It was easier to use and learn that a cash register and sales receipts. One night the bookkeeper shut the system down and refused to use it as the end of day reports it generated used TOO MUCH PAPER. The best part was that the detail reports they were printing were optional. The default was a simple summary. They had to manually select the detail output. So we went back to, you guessed it, a PAPER system.

Since the system had some other issues that frustrated me, I learned the code behind the system and rewrote much of it. The system still stayed down for another 6 months until I hid the end of day detail report option on another menu. Suddenly, it was now OK. Years later, as a consultant, I wrote a new sales and inventory tracking program for them. Their only requirement was there could only be one data entry screen in the whole program. I convinced them to use 2, and squeesed in a couple little screens for support data. And yes, all reports are optional and the detail reports are well hidden.

When I went back a year later to check on the system, I found that, although they used the data daily and had sales daily, much of the data was more than a month out of date. Old habits die hard. But it is their system and I got paid.

Jerry

[Tom Henkel]

RE: Users are stubborn

Just to go along with Robert,

We have been developing applications for our Social Services Agency over the last 10 years.The applications run the gammet from a fully integrated personnel system to Medicaid eligibility calculatons, to case management systems. Our systems are designed with ONE object in mind; Help the workers to do their job quicker, more efficiently, and more accurately. The plan has been extremely successful. Our development backlog is probably 3-6 months. Each program we have is the envy of othe agencies in the state. Even state entities have looked at what we do and would like to use it.

As a primary example, One of my programmers developed the Mediciad eligibility system. We calculate eligibility for ALL medicaid programs available in the state. Because we are public employees, our efforts are available *FREE* to any other county social services agency. Many have looked, but only one has taken a small piece of what we did, and is using it. Why???? POLITICS, fear that something so inexpensive can actually be good, "If the state didn't have it developed, how can it be good". The list of excuses goes on and on. We have shown our systems to numerous agencies, and every time they "respectfuly" (and sometimes regretfully) decline our offer because they are afraid of taking a different path.

With the support of our agency administration, we took a completely different tack than what the state wants us to do. This has really been a burr under their saddle, but they can't beat us up because we are the most efficient social services agency in the state.

My lesson here is to go boldly, but get top level support, and the rest will fall in line. (funny how that works)

Tom

[mronck]

RE: Users are stubborn

Jerry,

Good story.
Here is another one:

Once I had some negotations with a chain of stores to write a POS-system combined with an accounting system.
I even wrote a short demo to let them see what could be done. They were very enthousiastic about it, but now it comes:

They did not go into business with me, because when tomorrow a car would hit me, the programmer would be gone together with their investment.
Instead, they went to a bigger company who calculated about 10 times as much as I did.

It didn't matter what arguments I put on the table to tell them I would give them copies of the source-code that any programmer could follow up on. Their minds were set.

And what happened ?
Their supplier went bankrupt !
What they feared for happened.... The investment was gone.
Two weeks after the suppliers bankruptcy they were contacted by Company X. They had taken over part of the affairs and they could continue the product...... if the client was willing to pay another $ 10.000 !!
Do you believe it ?
It goes without saying the client didn't do this.
But now he is still working with the non-functional system, halfway ready halfway empty.
He has no more money to invest for 2 years to solve it.

It's a complex world !

Greetings,

Marcel

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Users are stubborn

That sounds about right. As an addition to my POS story, the original software our company bought was from a local custom software company. The original system was not that expensive, but when we asked for a very minor change in an import (it turned out to be one line of code), the quoted price was 10% of the whole package cost. Another change was claimed to be impossible. When I contacted the company that created the database engine software for some assistance, I learned that the engine software that was included in our package was already registered to another person and the copy we had was pirated! That was fun. Luckily, that company was willing to offer some unofficial assistance to help me, even though the software was techically illegal. I later made the changes the other developer claimed were impossible.

Maybe we need a chatroom just to trade horror stories. It could be very busy. Wanda's original problem is not that unusual.

Jerry

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Users are stubborn

That sounds about right. As an addition to my POS story, the original software our company bought was from a local custom software company. The original system was not that expensive, but when we asked for a very minor change in an import (it turned out to be one line of code), the quoted price was 10% of the whole package cost. Another change was claimed to be impossible. When I contacted the company that created the database engine software for some assistance, I learned that the engine software that was included in our package was already registered to another person and the copy we had was pirated! That was fun. Luckily, that company was willing to offer some unofficial assistance to help me, even though the software was techically illegal. I later made the changes the other developer claimed were impossible.

Maybe we need a chatroom just to trade horror stories. It could be very busy. Wanda's original problem is not that unusual.

Jerry