How IT surveys can generate work that fails to deliver, and what to do:
Mention a survey and people have pen ready to write questions. As with so many
things, designing surveys operates on the 80/20 rule. In this case a successful
survey requires 80% of the work to be focused in the planning and design phase.
To collect useable quality data and not irritate your clients; here are the
four key points to keep you on track.
Point one - respect your client's time
Everyone is busy. When you ask clients’ to take time to answer a survey, your
job is to ensure the survey you give them is clear, short, relevant and easy to
answer. To achieve that keep in mind peoples pet hates about surveys:
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No clear objective to the survey
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Too many questions, particularly free text ones
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Being sent a survey that’s not relevant to them
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Poor survey layout with questions not in logical order
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Mismatch between question and response type
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Asking about more than one issue per question
Point two - the objective determines everything
No clear objective is the main reason IT surveys deliver poor data. If the
objective is vague or too broad, your survey questions will be the same. Vague
questions lead to unusable or unreliable data. Ask yourself:
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What is the purpose and objective of conducting the survey?
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What are we trying to find out?
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Is a survey the best way to collect the information needed?
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Who do we need to ask to obtain the required information?
Point three - test, test, test...
When you’ve completed writing the survey questions:
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Run a trial of the survey on a friendly contact (outside of IT) to test if the
questions will return the information required
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Give up the notion that a survey has to have lots of questions. Ask the least
number of questions required to deliver the information.
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Cross check the scope of the questions to ensure they don’t stray into another
group’s territory
Point four - close the feedback loop
Survey results need to be distributed to IT management, clients and IT staff.
Each group has different information requirements to be planned for:
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IT Management is usually the main focus of reporting survey results. Keep in
mind the more senior the manager, the more pictures and less numbers required.
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Clients need to know their responses were taken seriously and their time
appreciated. Thank clients for responding, give them an overview of the results
and what you’re going to do about them.
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IT staff often have an anxiety about clients “having a say” without the right
of reply. Treat IT staff respectfully by releasing the results unabridged and
providing an opportunity to debrief their responses to the results.
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