Unless You Really Want to Look Like a Fool, Don't Save on Business Analysis

I have just heard Tom MacDonald's news report "Philly bike share glitch creating hassle for riders looking to upgrade" on the radio.

According to the report, Indego, a public bicycle sharing system in Philadelphia, offers two membership plans: you can "buy a monthly Indego30 membership at $15 that gives you unlimited one-hour-rides or pick the $10 per-year IndegoFlex membership and pay $4 for each trip."

But you cannot change your plan!

A Classic Example of "Broken As Designed"

This is an extremely annoying "feature" I keep stumbling upon in all kinds of software, be it customer-facing or "internal" business applications. I have been seeing this for years (if not decades) now, and it doesn't seem to be going away.

Imagine a web site that sells tours (just an easy to understand example). On a page, you see two dependent drop-down lists: one with continents and the other with countries (again, this is just an easy to understand example). Say, you select "Europe" from the first drop-down list and "Albania" from the second. The page refreshes and displays something like "Your search returned no results". You keep trying, and -- after 50+ attempts -- it turns out that the site only offers tours that begin in Germany (DE), Spain (ES), and Italy (IT). The other 50 or so European countries on the second drop-down list are there for absolutely no reason (except to annoy users). Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

IT-Averse Senior Management? There's a Workaround for That

Last week, I was talking to someone, and - totally unexpectedly - two situations I had completely forgotten about resurfaced in my memory.


Situation #1

Quite a few years ago.

I am sitting in the office of an old friend of mine, who owns and runs a successful business. His company is larger than what in Europe they call a "medium-sized enterprise", but not huge. As a person, he is, quite possibly, the nicest businessman I've ever met. You should see how courteous he is with the cleaning lady... but I digress...

So, we are sitting in his office chatting about his business. He is telling me about some of his challenges, and I am throwing ideas (naturally, the IT kind) back at him - just to keep the conversation going. Even though I am careful enough not to get too technical, I can tell by the look on his face that he does not understand much of what I am saying. Then, looking a little embarrassed, he confesses that all of it is totally over his head, that he "hardly knows anything about computers", and that he only occasionally uses his "obscenely expensive, but mostly useless, laptop to send personal e-mails".

As tactfully as I only can, I inquire if this (I can barely stop myself from using the word "disability") complicates his professional life. "Not at all," he replies cheerfully. "At work, I have a girl for that," he adds pointing at the door behind which is the office of his administrative assistant.

This was before AMC's Mad Men. Otherwise, I would have thought I was at Sterling Cooper.

Image from The Watcher, a Chicago Tribune TV blog by Maureen Ryan

Image from AMC Blogs

Note: In order to be completely objective, I have to explain that, in the country where this conversation took place, the word "girl", although not entirely appropriate in workplace context, did not sound as terribly politically incorrect as it would have in the U.S.

Implementing Web Publishing Workflows

Out of the box, most content management systems provide a very basic publishing workflow that consists of two states: "unpublished" and "published". Although it may be sufficient for a site of a very small organization or a personal web site, most large, mid-size, and even many small organizations will probably need more complex workflows.

Let me show you a very simple web publishing workflow that goes beyond the default "two-state solution". Bear in mind that, even though this workflow may be used in real life as is, being an intentionally oversimplified example for those who are not familiar with the subject, it has its limitations.