80/20 and puffing up (was Re: [Sigia-l] Right Side Navigation)

[Andrew]

Hi Ron and Jonathan,

didn't mean this as an implied insult to anyone, sorry.

I took Ziya's point here:
 > ... or corporate best practices, industry standards, the 99% rule of the
 >  week, the fad of the month, the chart of the year, the book of the 
decade, etc.

...as being an indication that there are many potential bandwagons for 
the IA to jump on - and it reminded me of how many times I'd been 
sitting in design or project oversight meetings and someone had said 
"well, the functionality (or project/study/analysis/...) is 80% 
complete" and someone else would say "Ahah! Pareto's Principle!" or 
something similar. I'm not really part of that in-house/let's have a 
meeting world any more, but when I was, I could have compiled a neat 
canonical list of 80/20 analogies. This then reminded me of the tech 
support guy at an office the other day who told me I had to resend an 
email to them and this time could I manually type in the address owing 
to their new SNMP server - I asked him if he meant SMTP, did he know the 
difference between SNMP and SMTP, and how would typing the email address 
in manually make any sort of difference? He got aggressive, not sure why 
:) There is a fear that I have observed in myself and others, that when 
being paid more that $100 an hour to be all knowing and all wise, we are 
unable to say "I really don't know, sorry".

That was it, and apologies for the rambling :)

Cheers, Andrew

Ron Zeno wrote:

>Jonathan wrote:
>
>  
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>>If you work for clients, who pay you money to have opinions
>>about something, then (in the absence of empirical evidence) it behoves
>>    
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>you
>  
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>>to give one! 
>>    
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>
>I disagree.  In my own consulting, I'm constantly torn between giving
>clients answers that they want to hear on a matter despite my knowledge
>(or lack of knowledge) versus giving them responsible answers that give
>clients the best information I have available along with my confidence
>in that information.
>
>Yes, we should give an opinion.  I suggest we do so responsibly.
>
>
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>>Lighten up. You're coming across as awfully bitter an twisted.
>>    
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>Ouch.  That hurts.  Sorry that I offended you so to draw such a hurtful
>reaction.
>
>
>Yes, Andrew took the discussion in another direction, and he changed the
>subject to note that.  I read Andrew's response in that context, that it
>was another topic.  Please don't read into my remarks any criticism of
>how opinions are being expressed in the navigation discussion.
>
>
>- Ron Zeno
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