Day 24: Setup Periodical Polls
In our 31 Days to Improve your IWMS implementation Challenge there have been quite a few posts about evaluation of an Integrated Workplace Management System based on different perspectives. These perspectives include:
- Commercial
- Organizational
- Project
- Training
- Support
By evaluating your project from different angles, you are more likely to acquire information (and ultimately knowledge) about your Integrated Workplace Management System).
In addition to the different angles, I have introduced a few scientific and popular methodologies to evaluate different aspects of your IWMS implementation.
As I acknowledge the fact that these methodologies can be consuming in terms of time and resources, I would like to introduce another evaluation methodology that I frequently use on this blog; the opinion poll.
The opinion poll or just poll is an excellent way to evaluate parts of the implementation at low costs.
Today’s teaching
An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. (Source: Wikipedia)
If you want to evaluate your IWMS polling can really help you to focus on the right things with little effort. By asking the correct questions you can tremendously improve your IWMS and the direction to go.
Components of a good poll
Although there are quite some types and formats of good polls, the quality of the individual components either makes or breaks the poll.
Answers
Polling is about gaining knowledge by collecting answers. If you want the right answers, you need to ask the right questions. Instead of focusing on the questions first, you need to start thinking about what kind of answers will be able to help you.
E.g. In May 2009 we published a poll about our second year focus. It took quite some time before we came up with that particular question. I will explain why.
During Q1 2009 we received a lot of emails from frequent readers of IWMSnews.com. After analyzing these emails we realized that apparently it was not clear to our readers what IWMSnews.com is about. As they had seen a wide variety of subjects covered on our website, they were lost.
These emails inspired me to:
- Update the “About” page
- Try to understand what readers expect from iwmsnews.com
- Focus on what readers consider to be important
Below you will find what I have done.
1. The About page
In the first week of May 2009 I have updated the “About” page of IWMSnews.com, and created a first paragraph that explicitly states what IWMSnews.com is about.
IWMSnews.com is about Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS). To be more specific we publish about all kinds of topics that have to do with software solutions that help to optimize facilities management and real estate performance of businesses around the globe. In the marketplace these integrated systems are known as Integrate Workplace Management Systems.
2. Try to understand what readers expect from IWMSnews.com
To gain knowledge about what readers expect from IWMSnews.com, I have had a few conversations with those particular readers. These conversations proved to be very helpful in understanding what readers expect from IWMSnews.com.
3. Focus on what readers consider to be important
As you write for an audience it is most important to understand what your readers consider to be important. Based on the user conversations we realized that our focus was more on the blog itself instead on the user. Therefore I organized the particular poll.
I started out by asking myself a single question: “What kind of answer do I want?”When I answered that single question everything became crystal clear. I wanted to know what readers want to read, but as market conditions change over time it had to be limited to a certain period. That resulted eventually in the question.
My advice: Focus on the answer you want! The question is a result of that.
(This also implicates that you need to do a bit of research up front)
Questions
If you have defined what kind of answers you want, it is time to think about the questions you need to formulate that lead to these answers. Formulating the right questions can be hard if you don’t focus on the answers first. However, if you have done that asking questions is not that hard anymore.
Below you will find a list of do’s and don’ts for your IWMS poll, that will help you creating the right questions for your IWMS poll.
11 Do’s and Don’ts for your IWMS poll
If you are going to setup polls you might find the list of do’s and don’ts below very useful
- Answers – DO focus on the answers you want from the poll
- Relevance – DO ensure that the questions are relevant both to the audience as to the answers you want from the poll.
- Length – DON’T exceed the maximum of 8 answers.
- Redundancy – DON’T use redundant options. They will only confuse the respondent
- Hint – DON’T suggest the answer to pick
- Unique – DON’T allow respondents to vote more than once.
- Specific – DO create individual polls for specific IWMS items.
- Result – DO report results of the poll immediately. Respondents like to see what their influence has been.
- Other – DO use “other, n/a or all of the above” to allow additional answers.
- Frequency – DON’T spam people with daily polls. Once a week is maximum
- Close – DO close polls. Some polls will draw irrelevant votes if you don’t close them.
- Analyze – DO ANALYZE results and action on them.
- Communicate – DON’T forget to communicate about important / interesting results.
Today’s task
Based on the do’s and don’ts list your task today is to create a poll for your IWMS. You can create a poll in the following categories:
- Functional (e.g. What should be improved within Space Management?)
- Technical (e.g. What database platform should we use (for our IWMS))
- Commercial (e.g. What should be the next module to be acquired?)
- Implementation (e.g. How do you perceive the vendor’s staff?)
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