Consequences when a human-centric approach is not adopted

Through my years of working, I have seen many organisations, read of other organisations that have changed systems, sometimes a year or 2 after the initial implementation, or sometimes undergo a major refit of their system just after the end of an implementation.

Some of the causes that caused those changes were a lack of adoption by the end users. Often people talked about the existence of   major gaps between the system that was delivered to them and the desired outcome. Often, the desired outcome were never properly expressed or properly captured during the project initiation phase.

There are sometimes small little details that make a huge difference in the way people work. Their presence creates small discomfort, sometimes big discomforts that we learn to tolerate, to leave with, even though they create tiny burdens. Coupled with other tiny details, they build up a general fatigue, that is not easily detectable but create a certain pain that is the difficulty to find creative solutions to new issues.

Those small details are normally revealed in passing during the discovery phase and are sometimes overlooked as they are so embedded in the user’s way of work, the habit of work, the business process.

Sometimes those small details were not deemed important to be mentioned by the end-users as the end-users were very used to them. Sometimes the end-users did not have enough faith in the management as they felt their feedback was not valued.

So those small issues, which were not deemed important, end up causing issues in systems adoption. They become imbedded, solidified through the new automated workflows, through user interfaces that are not ergonomic for all users. Faced with those small issues which are now part of the new system, users end of being reluctant to adopt by new system. This means the failure of the project:

·        Constant training is required, users do not want to engage with the tool that was designed for them”.

·        Constant corrective works are commissioned, inflating the cost of the project, over it’s initial estimate, lowering the overall profitability of the project.

·        Tensions between project promoters, middle management and end-users rise as projects benefits fail to materialise.

·        More resources are required to maintain the profitability, or morale degrades.

·        Eventually, a new system is commissioned to replace the work. But if no reflection was made for the failure of the previous implementation, the same error will be repeated.

The importance of considering the diversity of minds in system designs

Often, system design focuses on one aspect of the organisation but ignores the entirety of the user’s spectrum, thus failing to offer tailored solutions for all types of users.

This observation has strongly influenced my approach in Project Management and Business Analysis. Hence why, in the age of extreme automation and introducing AI, I focus on resolving end-users specific pain points in order to resolve the organisation global issues.

My view is that a global issue is nothing else that a series of tiny pain-points faced by individual users. Those tiny pain points end up causing a breakdown in communication, snowball into causing users  to lose sight of their connectivity. They end u making the entire organisation work less in unity and, ultimately create grave malfunctions in the organisation.

A bottom to top approach focusses on trusting the end-users, to better describe the issue they face, describe the solution they prefer. That trust is essential as they are the subject matter experts, being closer to the reality of the work.

When proximity to the issue, willingness to fix the issue and power to fix the issue are aligned, great things can happen.