You sit down with someone and ask them to show you what they do and inevitably they begin to show you how they do what they do. “Ok, when I get this, first I go into here and pull this info. Then I go over there to add that to this. Finally I merge this together, sort, add magic fairy dust and then send it off!” The potential pitfall here is to begin mapping out that process.
OK, before we go further, let me clarify. Yes, of course you have to map the process and understand where information is and what exactly is being brought together for consumption. What I’m going to go on about here is what happens when we build out that process.
So anyway, there we are with our construction paper on the walls and enough flow charts to trawl for fish! We map everything out, model it, test it and get user feedback. At the end of the day (well, really at the end of your SDLC) you have successfully replicated the user’s process and now they use this new process to do how they used to do.
Wait! But what did they used to do? It doesn’t make sense to build anything that does something the business already does unless there is some value added. Most of the time that value is in a saving of time and effort, but why are we replicating the process? We should be looking at what exactly they are trying to accomplish. I’ll make up some kind of example here to illustrate my point, hopefully (if not, at least it should be entertaining).
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Posted in Lessons Learned
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Tagged Process
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One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is a process that’s been in place forever. “But we’ve always done it this way,” or “We never had to do that before.” The current process is what users know and their day is carefully balanced to play out like a complex orchestral suite: the slow intro to the day with morning reviews of emails and follow ups from the night before, working into a more upbeat tempo of managing new tasks, running reports and answering questions. Then, Allegro! The tempo jumps and a flurry of zipping through legacy systems, pulling data, compiling, emailing, running around, and copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste begins. It all culminates in an anti-climactic, hurry up and wait at the printer, sign, stamp, double stamp and hand off or file and deciding what emails to leave for the next morning. Encore!
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Posted in End User
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Tagged Buy-in
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A little late getting back to this, but I’m here now. This past SharePoint Saturday was excellent. I bookend-ed my day with two really worth while presentations.
First, @SharePointLee gave a great presentation regarding the five personalities of SharePoint users. Everyone seemed to know someone that fit into one of those personalities. I myself was the investigator. I always need to know what we can do, how we can do it better, and of course, can I have it now! Head on over to SharePointLee get this and other great information about SharePoint.
I ended with Christian Buckley speaking about metadata. He is a SharePoint Evangelist and Senior Product Manager for echoTechnology. He had us think about a centralized model vs. a decentralized one. Food for thought. Check him out at BuckleyPlanet.
Next time a SharePoint Saturday comes near you, be sure to heck it out. I am sure you will get some good information out of it and meet some great people at the same time.
Spent the day at SharePoint Saturday. Great vendors and even better speakers. Enjoyed everything from Dux’s keynote speech to the 5 SharePoint personalities to Metadata. Will write more details shortly, but need to get ready for my flight to NY in the morning. Participating in a week long session with most the regional heads to map out our BPM needs across the business. Should be interesting.
The second Tampa SharePoint Saturday, will take place Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at the Kforce Offices 1001 East Palm Avenue Tampa, FL 33605. It will be an educational and informative day, discussing a variety topics within three areas of focus; End Users, Developers, and Administrators.
It’s FREE and open to the public, so don’t miss out! See you there!
Posted in Events
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Tagged SharePoint
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If you happen to find yourself in the UK later this year, you may want to take the opportunity to attend the 2010 Europe BPM Conference. It takes place the 27th – 29th of September 2010, in London.
Check out http://www.irmuk.co.uk/bpm2010/ for full conference information, e-mail customerservice@irmuk.co.uk, or call from the US 011 44 208 866 8366.
Maybe I’ll see you there!
Posted in Events
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Tagged Conference, Europe
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Well, hello there and welcome to my first post. It seems I find myself right off the bat with an issue to address. Communication.
Today I ended up at the receiving end of some foul words and dismal attitudes regarding a limitation in a system. I’m sure many of us have been there before, where the end user is complaining about something the system “ought” to do, but doesn’t. However, in this situation it was actually by design. Continue reading →
