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.
I recently sat down with several Stakeholders where we reviewed the current process and it was unanimously decided that there should be some limitation on a particular process. Only certain users should be able to perform a particular function within the system. So we clarified what our next steps were and we went back to our respective cubic-hells. I went on to submit the changes, prepare documentation and procedures. All the usual stuff. The Stakeholders went back and each had respective meetings with their staff. All was good in the world. Right? Nope!
Apparently they did have their meetings, but didn’t actually inform the staff of the changes. So naturally you know what comes next. I get an email from a user that the system isn’t working properly. It won’t let them or their colleague perform a needed function. I immediately went over to the users area to assist them, but it was too late. I got an earful about ..well basically everything.
In the end, the users were referred back to their management where they were then properly informed of the business decisions made resulting in the change for entitlements. While still not thrilled with the change, at least they now understood the reasoning behind the changes and that went a long way to placating their feelings.
Lesson Learned: Even if someone, such as stakeholders, are tasked to communicate information to the user base, be sure you have something in place to confirm that supposed communication took place. Otherwise expect dissent!
