Continued from Part II
I literally go from the airport, to Gumby's office, and thence to G's house to watch basketball. I'm absolutely shredded and a long weekend away from it all could not be better timed.
Hoops with the gang is sacred. I know next to nothing about basketball, but the gang puts up with me anyway. We eat a lot, drink a lot and loaf a lot - which is good for your mental state.
And my mental state needed a helping hand. I'd booked my PTO back when the West Virginia trip was not a threat - then the trip was moved to be right on top of Hoops.
Not cool. I ride out the weekend and soak up the camaraderie. Then I slouch back home to deal with Arwafn.
First there's the anxiety tag: Nerdhaven, like any business, has factions - and the loudest faction at present is the SMEs. The SMEs are frontline staff, up to their eyes in subject matter expertise, but also expected to perform a slew of customer contact, sales & support.
Since they have real jobs, they're not deeply plugged into what goes on back at Nerdhaven, and a lot of the work that our UX team does seems (to them, at least) to come from outer space. There are a lot of reasons for this: distance, iterative design, and a long history of unsatisfactory dealings with UX.
We don't build exactly what they ask for. Largely because every request out of the SMEs starts with a solution. They are smart people, and they know what they want.
Being in UX, we know that any solution causes more problems - and the trick is to look for root causes before you "just build what they ask for." It doesn't mean that UX folks have the answers (lord knows we don't) but our approach is to get more data to see if we can gain enough insight to make a 'big win' kind of solution.
The SMEs don't have time to wait for that kind of thing. They need answers yesterday - and are confident that their chosen approach will begin paying off immediately. They may be right - but one of the things we hear from our end users is classic alert fatigue: the users have more warnings then they have time to respond to. And a lot of the requests from SMEs amount to 'gimme a new alert option.'
Its difficult, and frequently frustrating for both UX and the SMEs and I don't see a good way out of it.
* * *
With that bit of background, you can appreciate the amount of anxiety tag that is ripping through the SMEs after the launch of Arwafn. They've done demos of the report in front of clients. They've described its many features and clients have oooohed and aaaaaaahed. And now the product has been flipped on for their clients and the result is a big, wet, thud.
And it's the SME on the horn or in the room with the client having to take the abuse, not me. Nobody in UX is on the phone with a baffled customer trying to explain why their numbers don't add up. Historically, the SMEs have to run with whatever features make it out of UX and they quickly share the skinny on what they've seen so they can go into client contact forewarned and forearmed.
I'm eventually cc'ed on a series of messages between the SMEs "Did you hear? This filter is a failure across the board!!" and that SME tells the next one, and the next - and soon you have a whirlwind of anxiety making its way to the higher ups.
The higher ups have seen this movie - and they rapidly direct their power on various minions who are ordered to bring them clarity about what the hell is going on. One of the higher ups is Gumby, new to Nerdhaven and that means I'm getting pulled into their office and other meetings to explain everything I know in detail.
I spell it out over and over again. I state my mistakes and assessment of where the product is at the moment. I spell out the issue with TURN codes and list out a half dozen other things that could be made to work better.
Then I do it again in front of the the execs. I have to go before the Wizard, who is mighty, but never really says much. I live in mortal terror of having to go before MGM, who is mightier still, but those fears are thankfully not realized.
Airing the TURN issue in front of this crowd means we are going to fix the issue. HockeyOne will be happy, Ajax will be relieved, and our client's data will at last be made whole.
And the exec level folks will make our lives an unending hell until all of this is done.
Product is leaving the company - completely unrelated to this situation, they just got a VP gig elsewhere, so this 'fix the Arwafn' effort is going to need a point person.
Absolutely no one volunteers. So, after a loooooong pause, Gumby raises a hand.
As the newest manager at Nerdhaven, Gumby has a free pass in the situation. They had nothing to do with what has happened up until now. Their role is enthusiastically endorsed by a roomful of cowards.
* * *
The boss is in this up to their neck, and UX is now on the hook in a larger sense. Gumby has to prevail.
And Nerdhaven has to fix Arwafn. All of it.
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