Hello Elise, Around 2001, Jon Innes and I had a session at UPA on Managing a Usability Team. We brainstormed a list of problems faced by managers and then used the fishbone diagram method to elaborate on the causes of those problems which included things like being too successful without enough resources, colleagues don't understand UCD, and others. I'll see if I can dig up the notes that we put together and send them along. There are two recent books of case studies in User Centered Design that have some of the information you are looking for. The book by on building an infrastructure by Eric Schaeffer has some good points. One of the things that happens to successful UX/UE/Usability managers is that they do a lot and don't invest in enough infrastructure to support long-term work - things like templates that can be re-used; best practices that can be pulled out on short notice, etc. One of the keys to being a good manager is to understand the goals of others and how others are measured. i wrote an article about that in the ACM magazine Interactions a few years ago. If devlopers are rewarded for fixing bugs, meeting schedules, and features (but not usability or a good user experience), then you might need to get the reward scheme changed so that involvement and measures of usability count for them as well as you. I think that the recent new edition of the book on ROI by Bias and Mayhew has some good stuff in it; many companies are pushing to understand the value of usability and managers will be asked that. It is very hard to measure the ROI since many people play a role in design and evaluation at large companies.
Chauncey ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
