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Subject:Re: Project surveys - any reason for them? From:Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 22 Jan 2003 06:13:43 -0800 (PST)
Karen E. Black <kblack_text -at- hotmail -dot- com> wants to know if there are any good reasons
to have customers complete satisfaction surveys at the end of a project.
I think management is often looking for data, either to confirm or to disprove some
contention or theory. Satisfaction surveys seem to often exist to prove that an
organization or project has met customer needs, both external and internal. In that
sense, they aren't true efforts to gather data and learn about the effectiveness of
some effort. As I said, they exist to prove a predefined point.
Still, they provide 'data' and so can't be dismissed out of hand. Perhaps rather
than attempt to demonstrate how the 'data' collected really doesn't measure anything
useful, which I take it you believe, too <g>, it might be more worthwhile to attempt
to influence the questions in an effort to formulate questions that might lead to
useful information. Without knowing what the political situation is where you work,
it is pointless for me to advise you how to proceed. I would look, though, at how to
get one or two questions into the survey that might give you or your documentation
team some useful feedback.
Other than that, I wouldn't worry too much about it. In some organizations, surveys
are as ubiquitous as they are meaningless.
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