Why do people feel it hard, to use a tool? - Part 2

Pain number 6. When we start, the tool was internally built and it was simple to use. Within 6 months, so many people wanted so many features and rules, and it became difficult for me to use. So by doing too many customization, people make simpler things more complex.

Pain 7. Just one manager is not happy about the tool; he/she starts telling bad stories about the tool to others and that creates a bad mindset. So after sometime, people start moving away from the tool.

Pain 8. People keep doing comparison against the best tool in that category with the tool your project uses. A wish list of people kills the spirit. To travel 2 miles to reach office, you do not need a race car that moves from 0 to 70 miles per hour in 7 seconds.

Pain 9. A few people want to try a new tool; for what? They want that jazzy name of the tool to appear in their resume! So the real intention is not to use the tool, but to just see the features and move out.

Pain 10. Ultimate fear of being tracked! Am I being policed? The more details I put in the tool, can act against me. So log only good stuff and let all bad data go to hell. When project is in crisis, and management generates a report, the report looks cool and green with no escalations. But that is not true and everyone knows that.

A tool can be anything from simple text editor to IDE to load testing tool or tracking tool. But people find a way to evade it. But ultimately if the wish matures to need and need turns to be a pain, and the pain cannot be solved without this tool, people do not care which tool they use - they start using it and they stay happy!

Why do people feel it hard, to use a tool?

Many times, you may hear the words from your management "We need specific metrics before we take a decision". But, from where we will get those numbers? The simple answer is right in front of our eyes - we have those numbers; the only difference is that those numbers are in different form. Someone has to collect, collate and present. Who is that magician to do that? Can that person relentlessly do that, what are the chances of making mistakes?

Simple rule. When you cannot rely on humans, rely on tools. They do not get tired or they do not at least ask salary hikes. When one SME company wants to have a tools - they get too many options from open source. When we did survey, many people said that, even though those tools are free, we need to spend a lot of time in setting up, configuring etc. Support is not a happy part of those tools. So the first pain is getting a tool and setting it up.

Second pain comes on usability. Are those tools designed with the best usability? Some techies did that - features are great, but the UI is not good, reports are not upto the expectations... No one wants to spend more than 2 hours to train or retrain their employees on a new tool.

Third pain. When we ask a question in the forum, answer comes 1 week after. By the time, the answer comes, the problem is either solved in one or the other way or it is forgotten. Hence the support loses the gas. People can wait for max 24 hours, and not more than that.

Fourth pain. This is one of the biggest pains you can ever think of. Addiction of people to emails and spreadsheets. When they are so used to these 2, making them to enter some stuff on a neat UI is not that easy. It is like making your kid to take broccoli soup.

Fifth pain. There is a not a big community behind the tool to support from peer users. This is an important aspect. People get results from other people who already faced the problems. They trust the words of these people, more than the original author who coded the tool!

Pain will continue in further posts...