[huskerlug] How to stop worrying and learn to love your superusers
- From: GreyGeek <jkreps@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: undisclosed-recipients:;
- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:11:37 -0500
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/14/16FE-guerrilla-it_1.html
I’m probably biased but this IS an interesting read. Here are some
highlights:
“/That's because there are in fact two kinds of superusers. One is the
geek who loves technology for its own sake and deep down really wants to
be an IT person. He or she will do whatever it takes to get the job done
without waiting for IT to sign off. /
/But there are also superusers who may not necessarily possess a wealth
of technical knowledge but eat, breathe, and sleep a particular
application -- whether it's your in-house accounting tool or your hosted
CRM solution. They're your primary internal customers. /
/The problem? The geeks tend to squawk the loudest and to focus on
minutiae, says Rachel Happe, research manager for the digital business
economy practice at IDC. But it's the application hounds whose voices
matter most/. “
*…*
"/You'll get an overwhelming amount of feedback from people who are
being very thorough but not necessarily thinking about an application's
primary- and secondary-use models," Happe says. "You end up with a
preponderance of edge cases." /
/To counteract "the loud crowd," Happe advises organizations to examine
log files to find out who uses the applications most often, and then
shoulder surf -- watching superusers work and asking them questions
about what they're doing and why. /
/"You want to develop an anthropological understanding of what your
customers do," Happe says. You also need to identify those who should be
superusers but aren't because the current version of the application is
too difficult to use, she adds. /
/Happe acknowledges that organizations may be reluctant to dedicate
limited staff time to watching their own employees, but the alternative
is millions of dollars spent on developing applications nobody uses./
*…*
/Bottom line? "You better hop on this train because it's moving," says
Alex Chriss, business development lead at QuickBase. "You need to
believe in your superusers and empower them. They're the ones that have
the business-specific knowledge. If you can empower them and give them
the tech knowledge and toolset they need to solve problems, you're the
one who's going to look like a hero."/
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