February 2, 2004
(Computerworld)
What do users want from IT? Usually it's not that hard to figure out. It's not even unreasonable. Sure, some live for interdepartmental politics. And some would rather fight with IT people than do business. But most users are more interested in getting their jobs done -- efficiently, effectively and with a minimum of stumbling over technology.
Funny thing: That's what you'd like for them, too. And if you can understand the things they want, you just might cut out many of the problems you have when users and IT collide.
So what do they want?
Users want technology to just work. But they know it won't always. When things fail, they want IT to recover quickly. When possible, they want advance warning. If they can't have that, they want to hear the bad news from you before they waste time and effort pounding away on systems that have died.
Users want explanations in business terms. They want to know how much it will cost, how long it will take and how it changes what they do. They don't know latency from legacies or virtualization from validation, and they shouldn't need to. Keep trying to get your explanations down to dollars and schedules and business processes. If they want the technology jargon -- and yes, some users really do get into geekspeak -- they'll ask for it.
Users don't want to be told no. They want to be told how much their ideas will cost, what the consequences of doing it their way will be, and what they'll have to give up to have it their way. That way, they can decide for themselves that their terrible idea really should be deep-sixed.
Users want all the bugs to be out of your applications. But they use commercial software too, so they know software is buggy. If they have to live with bugs, they want to know where the land mines are -- like, say, the help key that wipes out the last 15 minutes' worth of data entry on some screens. If those land mines are mapped in documentation and training, users can work around them instead of watching them blow up in their faces.
Users want the ability to recover from mistakes. That means backing out one step at a time without losing data. And rolling back transactions cleanly. And stopping processes that are in progress. Users know they'll make mistakes. They know it will take time to correct them. They just don't want an easy-to-make mistake to be catastrophic -- or take forever to reverse out.
Users want systems that get them from the beginning to the end of a process in the shortest time. It's not just about response time, but the total time it takes. They'll wait 10 seconds for data to populate a screen if that means they don't have to crawl through 10 screens that take two seconds each to click through.
Users want security to be invisible. They don't want to keep track of a half-dozen passwords, or worry about viruses in e-mail attachments, or have security get in the way of anything they do. They want you to stitch security into your systems so they don't have to remember to follow rules.
Users don't want things to change. Their habits make them efficient. They don't like new systems that break those habits unnecessarily.
Users want courtesy from IT people. An inexpensive "please" or "thanks" or "I'm sorry" buys a lot of cooperation from them. And remember, even the densest user can detect sarcasm and irony. They want you to at least sound sincere. If you can fake that, it goes a long way.
Users want ... whatever they want. You'll never know what that is -- or if you can deliver it -- by guessing, assuming or abstracting from current system usage. You'll have to ask -- politely, persistently and keeping in mind that they don't like talking to you any more than you like talking to them.
Because users do know what they want. And when you ask, you will too.
Frank Hayes, Computerworld's senior news columnist, has covered IT for more than 20 years. Contact him at frank_hayes@computerworld.com.
See more Frankly Speaking columns.