[wbill]

Heck, I'm fighting this problem right now. Part of it is that the people have no idea what they want, the other part is that they don't want to work on any of it - it's easier just to try and offload onto another department.

HR: "We want a website."

Me: "OK, I can work on getting one stood up. What do you want on it?"

HR: "Oh, this, and that. And some of the other thing. I dunno, why don't you put it together and we'll look at it?"

Me: "Well, I'm in IT, not HR. I'll be glad to provide a platform for you to work on, and show you how to use it, but the content needs to be made by you guys."

HR: "WHAT? We're going to need to work on this?"

Me: "yup. And, you need to keep it fresh. Putting out a brief "Letter from the CEO" once a year isn't going to cut it."

HR: "Content? What that? It's not something you do??"

Me: "Nope. Well, I'll be glad to give you a "What's new in IT" article once a quarter, or something. But you all will need to generate stories, or find people in the company to generate them. Then, you can upload them to the website. People like to see pictures of themselves. And read about awesome work they've done. You better get snapping!"

HR: "......."

I didn't make any friends in that meeting.

[marktwain]

Me: “Nope. Well, I’ll be glad to give you a “What’s new in IT” article once a quarter, or something. But you all will need to generate stories, or find people in the company to generate them. Then, you can upload them to the website. People like to see pictures of themselves. And read about awesome work they’ve done. You better get snapping!”

HR: “.......”

I didn’t make any friends in that meeting.

---

Great explanation of reality!

[AppyPappy]

Pretty much.

I have been here 18 years and we have been trying to implement a successful reporting system for non-IT people. We still haven’t been able to do it. The only successful reporting system is the Access databases that I created to talk to Oracle. Literally, a screen with a pile of buttons and a place to enter year and pay period. It looks like a code monkey version of Hoarders.
Crystal Reports comes with Visual Studio, which we get for free. But Nooooooooooo.....

[HeadOn]

That’s even a better example of developers and users not thinking alike. HR is a very different “culture”. You shouldn’t have to pretend to be HR. You should be told what they want to see, and if you have to guess, you need someone who “speaks HR” to do the guessing. (Please see post 69.)

[ctdonath2]

Raises a great point:
We engineers make _tools_. It’s up to the user to use them.