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We IT folks need to remember who's data it is anyway. Sure we need to guide our users toward standards. We need to complain loudly when they want edits removed because "They slow us down but we'll go back and fix it later." (ya right) but if they insist and their data gets trashed in the process remind them that it's their data. We need to keep it backed up. We need to help them with ways to use it more effectively. We need to give them ideas when they're stuck but we shouldn't be cramming things down their throats just because we thing something is cool, or 'the only way'. Sometimes we need to let them head down a bad path but be ready to help them get back. Heck, who hasn't replaced a block of code with a user's requested change but left the old block in the program with a comment like: "This code was replaced for very stupid reasons. So stupid in fact that it will be re-instated within a month, trust me on this!" And sure enough the users finally see the light and want the old code back.
We in IT need to be facilitators and leaders, not tyrants or dictators. We need to listen and listen to all departments not just the loudest ones. It's not our data and the sooner we convince the users of this the better off we all are. We need to be as they say on Mythbusters, "...We're what you call Experts!"
- Larry Fisher, Don wrote:
Such brilliance is not limited to the Oracle community, Steve. I've seen many examples of this type of genius during my career in AS/400 shops. This type of thinking was endemic to IT shops in the 1970s and 80s. Unfortunately, there are a few from that era that cling to that mentality. Donald R. Fisher, III Project Manager Roomstore Furniture Company (804) 784-7600 extension 2124 DFisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <clip> My wife has, for over 2 years, been project leading, for her dept. (she is in finance) a project to automate their current system, not a biggy. Now they had it in the USA for 12 months and not one working program, this was mainly because the MIS manager did not believe you needed to talk to the user to know what they wanted, I think he is cleaning toilets now. Anyways the US washed their hands of it and the UK took over, so they did a littletalking to the user and they are now in UAT.So my wife is the ONLY one on the system working at home and asked me to time (what they call a report but it is a display) a report, Invoices not yet invoiced, 1 country, 2,000 records, 38 seconds. All countries 51,000 records 2Mins 47seconds. I think we would all agree not acceptable. Also there is no way that the user can ever see more than the first 5,000 recordsbit of a problem for the UK who had 5,500.Now we come to the clever part, when they first ran this last week it crashed because 6 users ran it at once, so they changed it so each request was queued. Now we move from the merely clever to the brilliant. But if it doesn't run within 60 seconds it is cancelled and a message is sent asking the user to try again later. They decided that this info was too good to only give to the requestor, everybody should get the message (merely a case of lazy programming I think). Well in a meeting about this my wife pointed out to the MIS manager that there could be 1,000+ users on when this goes live and with the response times she was getting that everyone would be getting messages all the time, and now from the brilliant to the sheer genius, his immediate reaction? He started calculating how much extra disk space they would need to buy to handle it! A shining example of analysis, design, and testing. Talk about skilled professionals! I mean, you would need to take special courses to be so bad,wouldn't you? Where do they get these people from? <clip>
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