{"id":1383,"date":"2010-07-07T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1383"},"modified":"2010-06-11T15:20:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T23:20:27","slug":"up-in-the-air-packing-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1383","title":{"rendered":"Up In The Air \u2013 Packing Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Many of the people I know have watched a film called \u201cUp in the Air.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, I suppose it was a popular file garnering several Oscar nominations.\u00a0 (I have no idea if it won anything as I don\u2019t watch the Oscars.)\u00a0 Several people have told me how personal the film was, and other than the whole \u201caffair thing\u201d I\u2019d have to say that I agree.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take a moment to point out that I am nowhere close to 10 million miles either.\u00a0 However, there were certain points of the film that as I watched it (on a 4 hour flight of course) I chuckled to myself and realized that I do the same thing.<\/p>\n

The first of these moments occurred when George Cloony\u2019s character looks at his Anna (I have no idea what her last name was)\u2019s character\u2019s suitcase and begins throwing things out of it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gotten to the point where I have packed for 2 week international trips inclusive of 3 suits, workout clothes, extra flip flop (sandals), casual clothes, neck ties, etc\u2026 all in a convenient carryon bag.\u00a0 Cloony\u2019s character is exactly right.\u00a0 The 35 minutes spent waiting for a checked bag after you land at the arrival city is a considerable amount of time each year for many travelers.\u00a0 I\u2019d guess that if I checked a bag every time I flew, I\u2019d spend in excess of two 24 hour days in the airport baggage claim area.<\/p>\n

In HR software terms, what I\u2019m talking about is design, and most specifically design towards business requirements.\u00a0 There is all too often a desire from the business user to define every possible element.\u00a0 Division 1 wants to have 3 extra fields, while Division 2 things that their users will revolt if the \u201cCommit\u201d button is not located in the top right corner of the MSS form.\u00a0 This is all fine, but we tend to spend time working through this detailed minutia rather than solving for the business requirement.\u00a0 There are always tradeoffs to be had, and usually in the big picture, the strategic business requirement is much more desirable that forcing a few users to get used to the placement of a button, or to make do without a few fields.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, back in the 90\u2019s when we were all in love with the power of ERP and how we could all manage to our individual uniqueness, we allowed our organizations to get used to dictating to us in HRIT how our applications should be delivered.\u00a0 We still see it today even though re now realize that 90% of customizations are not driven by a business need, but by user preference.\u00a0 In today\u2019s world of SaaS vendors, many organizations are quickly realizing that not only are vendors creating user environments that are based on leading practice usability, but that vendor design is often better than anything customers can come up with anyway.\u00a0 However, there still seems to be a sense from the user population that small design items are important, and HRIS often sees minor customizations as simply minor.<\/p>\n

My point is this: get through the airport with a carryon.\u00a0 Minor customizations seem minor, but when you try to stuff them all in a carryon, you realize you\u2019ll have to check that bag.\u00a0 You have sacrificed future upgrade ease, you\u2019ve decided that the tradeoff for small customs is more important than business outcomes, and you\u2019ve once again told your ultimate end user that they know more about running HR than you do.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do it, carryons are a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of the people I know have watched a film called \u201cUp in the Air.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, I suppose it was a popular file garnering several Oscar nominations.\u00a0 (I have no idea if it won anything as I don\u2019t watch the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[172,170,173,174,171,168],"class_list":["post-1383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hr-technology","category-implementation","tag-business-outcomes","tag-customizations","tag-george-cloony","tag-saas","tag-travel","tag-up-in-the-air"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}