RE: Keyword on DSPF entry field

Nelson wrote [regarding sanity checking all inputs]:

>In a perfect world, I certainly agree with you.
>I've just never seen such an application in
>real life.  I suppose if you were a vendor
>that had the luxury of constantly working on
>and improving the same application over and
>over, for years on end.........sigh

I hear you about retrofitting.  Very loud and very clear.  What has happened
to me personally is that when I get 'one of those' screens where people make
lots of mistakes, I add the edit checking.  It's an incremental process
rather than a complete re-do.  Training people to use the keyboard properly
isn't really an unreasonable expectation.  After all, somebody explained how
to sign on, press Error Reset, etc.  Line people have managers, and if the
data suggest that Mr Oopsie makes more than his fair share of data entry
mistakes, then Mr Oopsie's manager should take a moment to find out why.

This is one place I actually made some points in a prior job.  When an
anxious warehouse manager called me to find out 'what idiot ordered 100000
cases of toilet paper' it was a bit of work to track down the offending
order, but two good things came of it:

1) We put an 'are you sure?' window in the entry program
2) We found that we were putting employees
   in the field without proper training, so
   we updated our 'when we hire people do this'
   list

It isn't hopeless at all!

  --buck

"This box Rocks!" - related to 2002 NE IBM
Conference attendees by IBM's Stephanie Joy