Leslie Wright - Human and Technical Challenges

Summary

In this insightful discussion, Leslie Wright shares the challenges faced during a project involving both human and technological transitions. The main human challenge was changing the mindset of workers who were accustomed to traditional methods. On the technical front, integrating new software with existing legacy systems posed significant difficulties. Wright emphasizes the importance of adaptability, ongoing training, and being open to various solutions to facilitate smooth transitions. The conversation underscores the necessity of understanding individual needs and adopting agile methods to navigate both human and technological shifts effectively.

Highlights

• Leslie Wright discusses the dual challenge of altering human habits and updating technology. 🤯
• Human-centered changes required out-of-the-box thinking and training! 🎓
• Legacy technology systems present complex integration challenges. ⚙️
• Making digital transitions requires champions to lead and support! 🏆
• Agile approaches on the human side are as important as in tech! 🔄

Key Takeaways

• Navigating both human and tech challenges requires understanding and patience. 🤔
• Legacy systems can be a tough nut to crack! 🥴
• Agility and adaptation are crucial for smooth transitions. 🌊
• Getting people on board with digital changes is vital! 💡
• Training needs to be flexible and tailored to different learning styles. 📚

Overview

Leslie Wright dives into the intricate dance between managing human factors and technical hurdles in transitioning projects. The human aspect, described as 'legacy humans', faced challenges in shifting from methods honed over decades. Training and open-mindedness were key, as workers learned to adapt to new digital processes. This highlights the importance of preparing teams for change with strategic support and empathy.

On the technological side, Wright notes the formidable task of integrating new systems with old, rigid software. Legacy systems often lack the flexibility of modern solutions, making the transition a puzzle to solve. The need for seamless communication between the old and new systems highlighted the complexities many organizations face when evolving their digital infrastructure.

The conversation underscores that successful transitions hinge not only on the technology but also significantly on understanding and adapting to human elements. Wright emphasizes a flexible, agile approach, both in managing tools and in training individuals, preparing teams with diverse resources to cope with the varied challenges of such projects.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Human Challenges The chapter discusses the main challenges encountered in a project which are categorized into two areas: legacy information technologies and 'legacy humans'. 'Legacy humans' refers to people who have been accustomed to doing things a certain way for many years, similar to legacy technology. The chapter touches on how these challenges were identified and overcome.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Technology Challenges The chapter titled 'Technology Challenges' addresses the difficulties faced when transitioning to a new system of doing things. It highlights the human tendency to adapt to existing problems to the extent that they become non-issues, only for these challenges to resurface with new systems. The narrative stresses the importance of reimagining processes and the inherent difficulty of changing established ways of thinking and working.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Transition and Adaptation The chapter titled 'Transition and Adaptation' discusses the challenges and solutions related to staff and human factors in municipal services. It emphasizes the importance of thinking outside the box when dealing with these challenges, especially focusing on training. The chapter also touches upon the involvement of the public side in this process.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Reflecting on Digital Transition The chapter discusses the challenges of digital transition, particularly focusing on the human and technological aspects. On the human side, it describes the difficulty individuals face when adapting to new systems after using longstanding methods for decades. On the technological side, it highlights issues related to working with legacy systems that cannot be updated or changed.

Leslie Wright - Human and Technical Challenges Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so what were the main challenges that you faced in the project and and how did you overcome these it kind of breaks down into two areas you had legacy information technologies that you'd need to work with but you have also had legacy humans uh we don't call them a technology but when you have somebody that's used to doing something for 30 years the same
• 00:30 - 01:00 way it's hard to think of doing it a different way um so with on the human side that was our biggest challenge is to to imagine how to do it differently you know people had learned to work around the issues to the point that they were no longer issues anymore but when you move to a new system and a new way of doing things those issues come back up and and what people
• 01:00 - 01:30 considered workarounds before now now is your opportunity to resolve them um so with with staff and that human factor you get into thinking outside the box um training um and then really i mean that's just the municipal side but you also have the public side
• 01:30 - 02:00 that have been used to doing it the same way for decades and and and you throw something new at them and they go oh and what are we supposed to do with this um so on the human side that's a huge challenge on the technology side when you're working with a uh a legacy system that isn't going to be updated or changed
• 02:00 - 02:30 anytime soon because it's in it it's the octopus of the corporation then you have to learn how to find ways to tie in your your new software with the old software and communicate so for building departments a lot of our our processes that we did were tied to a legacy software that was a step-by-step software if you don't
• 02:30 - 03:00 do step a before b then you can't get to c and and to talk about well we avoid all those things because then we take it out of the computer system do it uh outside of the tracking software and then at the last minute when we've done a b c d e but not in that order and then put it into the computer so we can issue the permit um and so when you have a new software that
• 03:00 - 03:30 doesn't constrain you in an old software that does it's hard to talk together so it was on the technology side that was probably our biggest challenge um to deal with that did you uh talk about a little bit more about the uh the changes that were needed in people's jobs as a result of the project
• 03:30 - 04:00 and how you manage their transition uh into their new activities our we didn't see a huge change in in jobs um you know plans reviewer moved from doing in paper to doing it on a computer it wasn't a a huge challenge to do it that way um our our intake staff moved from doing it
• 04:00 - 04:30 with paper to computer it wasn't a huge change the the downs the after effects is that what a position like a clerk a file clerk starts going well now i don't have files anymore we still have a decades worth of files that have to be dealt with but you know there's no new files coming in so that was more the position that's changing the
• 04:30 - 05:00 most that it's gone from a paper-driven clerk to now a data-driven clerk so instead of they're still responsible for the data but now they're responsible in a digital way they're not they're not putting away file folders but they're they're more ensuring that uh we're completing the the files that everything is in the electronic files before completion so that was the one area that changed the
• 05:00 - 05:30 most um for us okay and most people were able to make that change reasonably smoothly or yeah really yes well they had to um we i started even long before we started having the intake software we started
• 05:30 - 06:00 doing plans review on the computer so we get pdfs and we we do that um i was our plan was to get me you know six months ahead of everybody and work out the bugs before they had to so instead of doing a hard transition is is put on one person's shoulders or or even a couple people's shoulders to to figure out the issues get around them and and then move beyond that
• 06:00 - 06:30 there was uh reluctance um so one of our plans examiners um he he'd been in in the city for 15 20 years and he saw what i was doing and he chat with me he said i can't see him doing my job digitally he says i and i talked to him why and he said and he take me to his office and he says i have a stack of 200 papers here i want to be able to flip back and
• 06:30 - 07:00 forth put post-it notes on highlight stuff write notes and he says i can't do that digitally today if i said can i take your computer away from you and you want to do it paper there is no way he wants that he's now learned that digital digital can do an equivalent but even better so i think it's the the biggest challenge with that is perception and
• 07:00 - 07:30 understanding how to adapt through um taking what you did in a manual format and uh and into a digital uh the biggest thing we've seen is our file clerks appreciate it better is that uh he no longer puts 100 staples into the paper now and they're not ripping them out to scan scan all the paper so
• 07:30 - 08:00 um so to see that um advancement in in people uh and learning learning to do that um it has been exciting for for me to watch um and and it took a lot of effort to convince people um it uh we talk about uh how to make digital change uh you need to have champions for it somebody that's a resource that
• 08:00 - 08:30 people can throw problems at and they solve it right away um that that there's no solution no problem too big that there's always a solution for it and i i think um i you know i've read uh that there's been attempts by you know various companies to go digital but they they seem to not always make that transition easy and i and i often wonder whether or not they
• 08:30 - 09:00 they took into that human factor into the equation that put technology in place but that to convince people to use it to to teach them to to uh make sure that they have very few pains in the process whether that would have made the the difference in it i mean the way that i hear you talking about this you thought very carefully about it when you were thinking about how the new technology
• 09:00 - 09:30 would be introduced and you were very uh focused on uh [Music] the experience that people had as you did introduce it so you thought about it ahead and then as it was introduced it appears in the way you described the detail of the experience of the user that you were very closely focused on that and wanting to make sure that
• 09:30 - 10:00 that it went as smoothly as possible i'd like to say that that was the case but you're talking to me now after four years of doing this i'm now educated now i know what i need to do um it wasn't the case we we recognized that we would have challenges we didn't know what they would be we didn't know how we were going to resolve them but we took the approach that we were going
• 10:00 - 10:30 to be agile and you know we talked about software would be agile development well i think the approach on on the human side has to be agile as well that if you you may not know what the problems will be but if you're willing to take them on and deal with them and find a solution and keep pursuing it i think that works well i don't know if if i were to go to
• 10:30 - 11:00 another municipality whether the challenges would be the same uh i have a whole lot more experience but [Music] we're all different as humans and those personality mixes a great new dimension that it's hard hard to anticipate i and i think i think that was our the success that we had is that
• 11:00 - 11:30 being flexible and you know you can train 20 people at the same time but there might be three individuals that really need training one-on-one because as a group they don't they don't absorb it um you know there's different approaches you can write down instructions for some people other people need a video um some people need to be shown three or four times to memorize it you know there's there's no one way to do anything
• 11:30 - 12:00 if you don't have all the tools in your toolbox somebody's gonna be left out in the cold great advice on uh you know on dealing with people and the differences between them and you know responding to do whatever needs to be done to help them make the move and uh i think a valuable response