I was happy to find this article on enterprise software. The article points out the low expectations and bad design that are generally associated with the creation of enterprise systems.
Sherman argues that the two factors that drive negative outcomes when putting enterprise software into place are:
- “Enterprise software developers don’t pay sufficient attention to the specific wants and needs of their internal user groups.
- Enterprises don’t hold their vendors to high enough standards for application learnability, usability, and efficiency.”
He goes on to note that problems occur when system designs are based on the assumptions and designs of engineers, product managers, and requirements analysts, rather than being built up from observation and freedback from actual users. Another problem is featuritis - where more features are haphazardly added to a system with no attention paid to how they fit together as a whole.
Finally, Sherman posits that that decision-making process of companies buying enterprise software “typically neglects methods of evaluating the goodness of fit between the enterprise users’ processes, wants, and needs and vendors’ solutions,” and that “organizations could avoid many a rollout disaster simply by testing the usability of vendors’ solutions with employees during a trial phase.”
