Communicating: What Should You Expect

Creating Passionate Users has an interesting article today on the success of communication techniques.

When trying to communicate to a crowd it looks like the best you can get is about 30%, and that’s if you put something in their hands and communicate via written or video media.

This rings true with my own experience. I have been involved in a number of large projects that have implemented some new technology something (email, desktop, etc.). In each case the implementation has gone slower then the project managers expected and in every case the project managers have complained that the end user has not done what they were asked to do.

If a project requires the end user to do something – the best you should expect is that 30% of them will do it. If you start with that number you will build a project that will at least be realistic about the effort that is going to need to be expended overcoming this limitation. If you expect that only 30% will do what you want them to do then you will realise how important it is to have a project that requires the end user to do nothing whatsoever; any dependency on the end user will just slow you down.