On 30 October 2015 at 13:57, Greg Lubel <greg.lu...@uk.ibm.com> wrote: > Thanks to all who have followed the link to my survey. This is a quick > question to those of you > who've looked at it and decided not to complete it. > > Would you mind letting me know in a sentence how I could make it better, to > encourage completion?
There are, unfortunately, few one sentence answers from me. Though "offer a reward" might be one. Jumping to the end first, it turns out that the survey isn't anonymous (name and email are required, even if I don't ask for followup contact). Well sure, I could give you fake info (I didn't), but you really need to make this clear right up front. Back to the start. I think in a sense you're operating in a different world from many (most?) people on this list, and your questions and terminology make assumptions that preclude or at least discourage the answers that people might want to give. Right off, the choice of "what do you do" (Q1 and Q2) isn't a good fit. Where do the traditional z/OS System Programmers put themselves? I'm a developer at an ISV. I write mostly in Assembler, with Java and C on the side. What do I call myself in your terms? Perhaps you aren't interested in ISVs, in which case you should probably say so, since the survey seems implicitly geared only to end-user customers. Further on you get into this "If you had 100 points to spend" stuff, and I know from discussing it with many people over a long time that this in a survey turns people off very quickly for a couple of reasons. First, it says it's going to be a fairly long survey that takes some serious thought, and I don't see a good reason to give you my time when you haven't provided a strong, detailed background explanation of what you are trying to accomplish. Second, this tells me that you are trying to build some kind of internal business case using automated methods (fine), but that you want those being surveyed to provide a lot of detailed data according to categories that you have already selected to suit the case you want to build. I already sense a solution looking for a problem. And sure as winter follows fall, a sales pitch (maybe not to me directly, but still...) is coming next. But because I'm such a nice guy, I'll continue... Woo - at 38% now. Now in Q7 we're back to terminology problems."Cataloguing applications, consuming services, exploiting z Systems assets..." Not really my day job, even though I suppose by a stretch I do some of those things. Q8 (Hint: if there's only one choice, don't present it in a drop-down list). Q9 Now you seem to be giving me a "task". No, no, no... This feels like my annual appraisal. OK - I see - you're asking about my existing "tasks". Q10. 10. More... Do you have another important task you’d like to share? Yes or No Badly laid out. I'll assume not checking it means NO. Q12. Would you use a native z Asset Management tool if one were available? I have no idea what this means. So I answered NO. Then you ask me: Q14. What benefits do you experience or anticipate experiencing from using a z Systems asset management product? Given that I've said NO to Q12, answering 20 more questions on it seems unreasonable. OK - you've had your free 20+ minutes of my time. Seriously, I do think you need to explain a whole lot of background before asking people to complete a survey with topics and terminology they are likely to know little or nothing about. I see Asit Dan has done a number of presentations on this stuff that might prep your audience. Maybe point those interested there *before* asking the questions. Even if they're still not interested, they'll have some idea of what you're asking about. Regards, Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
