Re: OT: How do you get people to USE your scripts?
Re: OT: How do you get people to USE your scripts?
- Subject: Re: OT: How do you get people to USE your scripts?
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:15:26 -0500
Hi all,
Sorry this is slightly off topic. I'm having a problem that I'm sure
some of you have experienced before. Others of you will probably
encounter it in the future so it seemed a worthy topic.
I work as a (more or less) full-time in-house scripter for an
artwork company of around 100 people. My colleagues and I write
scripts that save huge amounts of time and money. Most of the ideas
for the scripts come from the end users themselves.
A pattern has emerged though. Some users use the scripts day in and
day out which is great but there's a small but worrying proportion
who's use slowly tails off.
The scripts still work as well as they did on day 1. I can prove
their worth with figures showing that the scripts save time and
money. There's nothing technically wrong with the scripting, trust
me its a people problem!
I was wondering how you people, as scripters, launch and then
promote your scripts with the users? Do you have a big launch event?
Do you do nothing at all?
I find that there are three possibilities when this happens.
1) My script doesn't actually save that person time and money. There
is some hitch that I didn't think about in that particular person's
way of working that makes using my script problematic. If I sit down
and understand what the problem is, I can usually program around it.
2) The documentation is not good enough. We have a production
graphics department here and I script, one-click, quickkey, alias and
template stuff all over the place. None of my production people
totally understands everything that can be done in their head at once
-- they save that for the things they use very often. Anything else,
I've got to make sure they can figure out exactly how to run a script
and what it does without my assistance. If they need reminders,
reinforcement, training, easier access, simpler documentation, etc.
-- that's part of my job.
3) The person in question is just not production oriented. Some
people care more that they do things the way they always have, than
that they are working efficiently. IME, a minority of people, once
they realize what scripts can do, will start nagging you to make more
for anything that involves too much repetitive work. They will bring
suggestions to you, and even think of things to automate that you
wouldn't. These also tend to be the people who are the most
productive -- because they are constantly thinking about what they
could do a little differently to make things work better and faster.
Others care, but don't take quite so much initiative. They won't
make too many suggestions, and may require some coaxing to use your
scripts, but eventually they will if you have done your whole job.
The third kind is someone who might be perfectly competent, but would
never fly in our company, or in most production art departments.
They are slower than everybody else. They may know their stuff and
do beautiful work, but they cannot, or will not just knock the
regular stuff out with speed. I think the only thing you can do with
these people is put them in positions where speed is not an issue, or
let them go. If you aren't their boss, that part isn't your problem
-- you just have to live with the fact that some people aren't going
to use your scripts.
Michael
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