Tribal Workarounds

In the absence of knowledge comes ‘this is how I got it to work.” People and groups will fill in gaps in knowledge. If you either don’t train people, or your product leaves areas of ambiguity, then people will take the easiest path forward – they’ll either give up, or, they’ll find a workaround that gets them what they need. And one day you’ll find these and be completely baffled as to how they came into existence.

Sit with your teams, see what they do, better yet, do it yourself. I’ve done this with every team I’ve worked with for products and I’ve found that issues going back to a customer for resolution had actually already been solved. But the solution was buried deep in a menu structure that had been forgotten about over time.  If your teams are customer facing, sit with them for a day, see what you learn.