Re: ending jobs normally -- MIDRANGE-L

Duh

Your world must be very different from mine.

There is a spectrum of problems that can lead to garbage in our files, and 
many of these problems are collectively of our own making.

In my world, there is no upper management mandate that there be any coherent 
plan of training new users in their tasks or adherence to any 
cross-departmental cooperation plans that might have been worked out with 
former employees in that department.

When a new person is hired for some task involving using software I am 
responsible for, I can reasonably assume they are taught NOTHING about our 
operations or the software they will be using.

The person who used to do the work & understood a vast spectrum of nuances is 
gone, but before they left, they had taught some co-worker how to handle the 
basics when the primary person out sick or on vacation.  This co-worker who 
normally unfamiliar with the application is now teaching the new person & of 
course all they get are the basics.

Corporate Memory bleeds every time we have turn-over.

Thus there is a vast spectrum of things that can go wrong that I think would 
be largely avoidable if the new user orientation included a few hours of how 
to use the computer equipment productively & how to interpret an error 
message & the notion that when your work is disrupted, you should not just 
jump right back in once the connection is restored.

Some users asked for a software enhancement ... their request was 
inexplicable ... come to find out they were not using their department's 
manual & doing approx 100 times as much work that was neccessary.  The 
personnel in question had been with us for several years.

We have several designated power users who are experts in the various 
applications.  Normally they try to help when we have a compounded mess of 
errors piled on errors such that the end user cannot just bumble on after the 
latest mishap.

Of course part of this problem is the complexity of an ERP.

The company wants to hire people who do not need to know computer stuff, just 
know whatever their job is.  But that does not work with the package we have 
... the users need to know something about the application & its interfaces.

> From: D.BALE@handleman.com
>  
>  I agree that some situations are out of the users hands.  But, don't your
>  users call you or someone in I.S. when this happens?  Besides, Dawn made it
>  pretty clear that her users are leaving their workstations without signing 
> off.
>  
>  - Dan Bale

Al Macintyre  ���
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---