Workshop

A Remember that what a user says is always subjective. You need to take a look for yourself to see what
the facts are. Also, talk to other people in her office. Look at her workstation yourself. Odds are that
something has changed. This is change analysis, to be sure; however, SOAP reminds you that any user
reports are subjective—you need to corroborate the facts yourself.
Q I’ve reported bugs to manufacturers before, with no success. Granted, there are manufacturers
who listen, but how do you tell which ones will?
A Assuming you reported the problem in great detail, my sense is that the smaller software vendors are
really the ones who tend to respond to their individual users’ problems. The larger software vendors,
without naming names, tend to send you a form email that says something like “This will be fixed in the
next release” or “Software is operating as designed.” Believe it or not, even shareware vendors tend to be
really, really responsive to you—particularly after you’ve registered a large number of licenses with
them. They appreciate the business, and it shows.
Quiz
1. Subjective means what?
A. The way someone sees an issue
B. The cold hard facts
C. The world according to Garp
D. The truth of the matter
2. True or false? SOAP notes always lead to a conclusion the first time.
3. A piece of subjective data should be _________.
A. ignored
B. collated
C. divided
D. investigated
4. Which of the following is not an example of a piece of objective data?
A. How a user perceives a problem
B. A measurement
C. The number of users involved
D. The timing of a problem
5. Analysis is usually the process of thinking about what?
A. The cold, hard light of reason
B. Reasonable subjective data
C. Objective data only
D. Subjective data plus objective data
6. True or false? Gathering more data is a common plan.
Answers to Quiz Questions