June 14, 2017 at 5:44 am
Having worked on multiple AAA (high-quality) video games that were live (online) products that took 3 - 5 years to develop and are still being iterated on today 4 years after their launch, I can say that the experience of working with internal and external users such as customers between the ages of 13 and 60 has changed my perspective of how I was taught to work on and maintain products and or services, especially with products like video games that are insanely hard to keep the end users happy.
I learned very quickly, similar to what David mentioned already, that no matter if they are internal or external stakeholders, the overall focus needs to be problems not solutions. Those working on the solution need to be emphasized that they are the doctors--professionals who are trained and certified to do a job--who are asking you where you are feeling the most pain so we--as doctors--can diagnose, recommend a treatment plan, and then execute on it with you.
Things get tricky when you cannot work with the users in helping them understand their role and what information you need to use to diagnose the issues they face. Things get even more tricky when you over complicate the treatment process and do more than what you should. Unfortunately, there is not a solid science we can refer to on the best course of action to treat every problem we run into. But I do believe, most of the over customization does come from not understanding the problems or how to coach the end users to identifying those problems out the gate. Then everything else is just due to inexperience in knowing what the best course of treatment is and knowing when enough is enough.
I regularly have these types of discussions with my team. How do we prevent ourselves from going down the rabbit hole on trying to think of every possible solution, feature, whatever and find a good balance that is not going to over complicate things and take super long to deliver. It's hard sometimes, especially if you are excited about the project. But, that's where the experience comes in for most to identify when enough is enough and done is done.
June 19, 2017 at 7:59 pm
Sounds like you came together with previous IT manager, there should've been some collaboration there and possibly compromise, and if you got the ok then what else can you do. The previous IT manager might've been pressured to comply to meet timelines/budget, but again, that's out of your control probably.
I'm so sick of using crappy enterprise apps because they're built with every man and his dog in mind. Good on you for thinking of the users first.
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