Dear IT Department, I Am Your Customer

Years ago, before getting my current job, I had an interview for an IT position. My job would have been to develop software for the company's internal usage.

After the first round with a psychologist, I talked with the IT manager. At the end of the technical questions, he told me that his men were supposed to have the things done quickly, no matter if ugly or poorly usable. I don't know the expression I made but there has not been a third round.

Bad Software

As a user, I really can't suffer software that are slow, ugly, and not usable - and I think I'm not the only one. When I encounter one of those bad programs, I look for an alternative. But with company software, I cannot choose. I am obliged to use whatever program the IT department has chosen.

I have a list of products that suck, many of those are commercial solutions chosen by some manager that doesn't have to use them. And I am pretty sure that you too have your own list of bad software. But I'm not gonna share my list with you and I'm not interested in reading your list.

The main reason is that, in some cases, what sucks for me may be useful for others. Another reason is that it makes no sense to complain here: it would not change the situation.

What I did in the past is to report my complaints to the people who (I think) are able to change the things. Did this work? Sometimes. In other cases, at least, I've had an explanation about the constraints that make not practical to make a change. In some situations, it depends on how many other persons report the same thing. If everyone is complaining only with his/her colleague, how can the things change?

Bottom line

To conclude, a simple request for whomever chooses (or develops) the tools used by his/her colleagues: please consider them as your customers.

Cover image by f1uffster (Jeanie) taken from Flickr licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.