Getting out of the ivory tower

These days most of us don’t just have a single career.

We have a sequence of them – most people having at least 2. Or we might be involved in more than one business at a time.

In a past life I was a manager with a team that developed software products. The products we developed were used by electronic designers.

So at one end of the chain was me. And at the other was the electronic designer working in my customer’s organisation and who was actually the end-user of the software.

That chain was a long one.

Colleagues of mine in other areas of our (very large) organisation such as Sales and Field Application Engineering did deal directly with customers. And I did speak with those colleagues of mine in such forums as Product Review Teams.

But there remained issues.

Firstly, the customers were often not users. The people making the purchasing decision were usually not the electronic designers who actually used the products.

Secondly, I was not even talking to those customers. Let alone the users.

You can see the gap – a wide gap between the two ends of the chain.

The effect?

It was a serious challenge to ensure that the software we developed provided what the users wanted.

Do you have any such challenges ensuring that you understand the perspectives of the end-users of your products/services?

Have you any niggling doubts about that?

If you sense you’ve work to do in that area, then click here to schedule a time for us to talk.