Rodent Regatta

This old joke has been told a million ways and is relevant to almost that many technical support operations. It’s the reason I’m not willing to deal with trying to make a profit in technology advice any more. Once I’m on the front lines trying to help one of my clients with their hardware or software or other technology implementations, these are the kinds of answers I get. That’s for someone else, but not for me.

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said ”Where am I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said ”You are in a helicopter.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to Sea-Tac airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the ”You are in a helicopter” sign helped determine their position.

The pilot responded ”I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”

If you want to read a (serious) alternative to such an approach, read this about Dr. Deming’s views on operational definitions. Consistent, uniformly-understood terms and vocabularies are essential to effective communication.

In the case of software support, it must begin with some understanding of what it means to the ultimate customer of the software when they are down. What does business interruption feel like? How do we get support people to develop some sense of urgency – not panic – about the state that they put their customers in when software doesn’t work.

I can hear it now, ”how do you define doesn’t work?” Well, let’s start with this: it doesn’t do what you, your manual and your volley of emails said it would do!