Understanding Business User Perspectives
During the life cycle of financial projects, sometimes we do not pay quite enough attention to the target end users of the application that we are building.
IT focus a lot more on project champions, those business users who are more technically savvy, and therefore considered to be more on the same wavelength. At a personal level, these champions are normally those who IT find to be easier to engage with.
Sometimes in the midst of our excitement of delivering management goals and the enthusiasm to build a state of the art application, the end users which are not project champions are neglected. IT need to listen more to these users as sometimes they are the people who really understand what is important to make an application more efficient, more usable. These members of the infantry matter, we should recognise that and encourage their informed participation.
Sometimes this boils down to cultural issue where IT and end users sit in different part of the world, sometimes it is simply the fact that end users and IT do not share the same vocabulary. Business users do not live in the world of technology, and sometimes have difficulties explaining what they need to IT. On the other hand, IT do not live in the world of business and have difficulties grasping business requirement.
User: “I don’t know what I want, but I will know it when I see it”.
We should not give up trying to listen to our users, however painful it may seem.