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  15    <title>General: First few days at GE - AKA: How broken processes can get?</title>
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  59                         <h3 class="entry-header">First few days at GE - AKA: How broken processes can get?</h3>
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  62                               <p>After being here a few days and working through the various set up processes and the frustration involved with that I feel compelled to rant a little to blow off some steam. How do processes get this broken? It can't be just "Management by MS Office" as there are now web components entered into the mix of unneeded and unnecessarily redundant processes (pun intended)!</p>
  63
  64 <p>OK so I'm signing up for access to the Unix shares and machines so I can use Clearcase. I need to use Clearcase! I mean I'm the Clearcase admin right?. So first off there's a process, and process documentation to go through - a 4 Meg 70 page process! And the step by step guide is, of course, old and wrong. Muddling trough I submit a ticket to some support group...</p>
  65
  66 <p>Gripe 1: Why do I need to provide all kinds of information for this simple request? IOW Why isn't a simple one "I need Clearcase access to X" sufficient! Oh well. Rule - keep things simple.</p>
  67
  68 <p>So I get an email with yet another 8 step procedure that I must complete to get this access. Plus the way they describe it - Go here, click there, put your username here, search for this, select that - for most users (what if I'm not most users? How would I know if I'm an exception)? Etc. Then submit to <b>start</b> the process!</p>
  69
  70 <blockquote><p>Ah I see a problem here, they tell me to go to this page and search for that then I'm presented another page. Why not give me the link to that other page? Well because the web programmer didn't program it such that it has a unique URL. Bad design!</p></blockquote>
  71
  72 <p>Gripe 2 : Why must I follow various individualized steps? If I must fill in certain fields certain ways, why not give me a link that fills them in for me? Reduce the steps! Never tell the user to go to a web page then start clicking to go to yet other web sites - just point them to their final destination!</p>
  73
  74 <p>Gripe 3: What do you mean <b>start</b> the process?!? I started the process last step. Aren't we <b>in process</b>?!?</p>
  75
  76 <p>Gripe 4: Waiting. Where possible eliminate user wait time! This is the 21st century! Wait times of over a few nanoseconds shouldn't be there. Now I know sometimes you need to get "approval" of the boss or whatever but make it quick.</p>
  77
  78 <p>Gripe 5: After we complete this we get more instructions?!? You're kidding right?</p>
  79
  80 <p>Gripe 6: <b>Never</b> send email that does not have a proper reply to address. Doing so assumes your communication is perfect. It's not!</p>
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  87                            <span class="post-footers">Posted by
  88                            Andrew DeFaria on
  89                            February  2, 2010 07:20 PM</span> <span
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 237                                                          <li class="module-list-item"><a
 238                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000728.html">Stupid is as stupid does</a></li>
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 240                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000723.html">Priority Queues...</a></li>
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 242                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000722.html">Broken DNS</a></li>
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