“Wait—you can have happy users?!” on HPE, November 6, 2018
“Historically, there has been friction between IT organizations and its users,” says Alan Zucker, founding principal of consultancy Project Management Essentials. Among the causes of the friction is tribal perceptions and misconceptions in the two communities. “Users see IT as being nonresponsive. IT sees users as being not understanding and demanding.”
Changing those perceptions means changing processes and dynamics. You might want to start by doing the Gemba Walk.
“The Gemba Walk comes from Toyota lean manufacturing and is Japanese for ‘in the place,’” says Zucker. “It has come to mean that managers, IT, or support people spend time on the front lines seeing how their applications or processes are actually used. There is nothing more powerful than seeing a user struggle with a process that was supposed to be straightforward.”