I don’t have kids, but I do know how young kids ask questions. They are innocent, and free of assumptions, and keep asking “why?” In the end, the poor adults either get tired of the questions, or realize that there are assumptions they’ve been making for all this time that might actually be worth questioning.
Human processes mold around software. We see this all the time. A CRM gives you these 5 canned reports, and you get used to making do with what’s there. A legacy client database requires a certain order of data entry, and your intake forms have been produced to copy that order. Your email software has particular limitations, and you find behavioral workarounds.
What’s also true in the realm of customized software, is that software is molded around people. You put in your RFP that a package spit out data in X,Y and Z ways because your ED is used to data in that form (maybe because a package they had at their previous organization had those canned reports.) You have a requirement that data be entered into the system in one particular way, probably because that’s the way you’ve always done it. Sometimes, you feel the need to replicate a process that the person 3 administrative assistants ago put in place that was molded around their particular limitations, just because that’s what you know.
When you are undergoing the process of creating or implementing a new system of any sort, whether it be a CMS for a website, a CRM, some internal system, it is a really good exercise to be like a 3 year-old, and keep asking “why?” Why do we need this feature? Why will this report be important? Why should the software work this way? Once you peel the layers down to the bottom, you’ll either have “we don’t know” or “because we believe it will help us meet our mission in this specific way.” Then you know what you should take, and what you can leave behind.
Tagged as:
nptech,
Software
I got to spend one day at CiviCRM developer camp this week. Unfortunately, it came after 4 long days of conferencing, after many exhausting days of work, so I wasn’t at my peak. But I learned a lot, and thought I’d share some of what I took away from that day.
First, the core team shared some of the new stuff coming out in version 2.3, and it is awe-some. One of the major reasons CiviCRM gets dinged as a CRM/DMS is that it doesn’t have reports. Well, that problem is about to go away with the release of CiviReport in 2.3. There will be a number of canned reports, and some really nice ways to create reports. Plus charts! Yay! There were some pie charts, and regular bar charts. I don’t have the new svn trunk of CiviCRM installed, otherwise, I’d show some screenshots, but it looked really nice. (I’ll be installing CiviCRM from svn in the next week, and I’ll probably blog more as 2.3 develops.)
There are some really nice usability improvements coming up in 2.3 as well – to make the basic contact pages much easier to navigate. And there is a new menu system, which will make things a lot easier. And, for Drupal users, some sweet Views 2 and CCK integration.
CiviEvent is getting waiting lists, registration approval, and user-modifiable registrations, and some other improvements.
The Alpha of 2.3 should be out by July.
I also learned about CiviCase, which is actually present in 2.2. I saw the example of it used for the Physician Health Program in Canada. It’s quite good, and there are some useful docs to see it at work on the CiviCRM wiki. I’d love to find an organization, such as a small human services organization, in need of case management software, that could use CiviCase – it would be a great, and relatively inexpensive alternative to current offerings out there. And more organizations using CiviCRM for case management would help CiviCase get even better.
I also dug into some of the internals and code of CiviCRM, and feel better equipped to start contributing more than ideas and feedback to the project.
Tagged as:
civicrm,
CRM,
nptech,
opensource