on getting more work

There is a story that sounds too good not to be true. The story goes that in the mainframe era IBM sold both computers and typewriters. And IBM made sure the secretaries of the IT bosses got the very best most attentive service on their typewriters.  So that when the IBM salesmen showed up to sell the latest computer they got shown right in.

Nowadays that iPods help sell iMacs is called the “halo” effect.  Not an entirely new concept.

I worked on a project that provided a fairly minor software application used by all the departments in the company.  It didn’t do much and it wasn’t a particularly slick product so that’s not my story here.  What it did do is make me do is go out to each department and actually talk to people.  In particular the office managers, secretaries and some of the bosses. 

Now most programmers do not have any reason to talk to users and we like it that way. I have the suspicion that most IT managers, being ex-programmers, don’t like to talk to users either.

But when I had to talk to real people they kept suggesting more and more work to do.  Little piddly stuff, things the IT department didn’t want to do, but in a season of downsizing, work is work. Sometimes I think that analysts need to pretend they are typewriter service guys.  Salesmen in sheeps clothing.  Real business analyst is a long term, intensive and pervasive activity and doesn’t really belong to a single project. Business analysis is about what is good for the company. It spans projects.  It spawns projects, projects are just point exercises along the way. But practicing analysis as a standalone endevour for one particular project looks kind of silly and superfluous. You should be unobtrusive and unobviously an analyst.  Like maybe the IT LAN administator who talks too much, or the IT training / help who doesn’t hide in the phone system but actaully walks around the building.  Someone who can get in and out and isn’t a threat to people.