Summary and Lessons Learned

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 5. Defining Your Directory Needs > Determining and Prioritizing Users' Needs and Expectations

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Determining and Prioritizing Users' Needs and Expectations

A great way to measure the overall success of any service is to ask its users whether it meets their needs and expectations. Even if you don't measure your success based on user satisfaction, someone else (such as your boss!) will. Thus, you should ask users about their needs and expectations in advance of the directory service deployment.

Because most end users are probably not familiar with the concept of an open , general-purpose directory service, you may need to educate them before you can extract useful information about their directory needs and expectations. If you already have some application-specific directories or an existing general-purpose directory in your organization, the task of determining user needs will be easier.

This section discusses some ways you can determine and prioritize your users' needs and expectations.

Asking Your Users

One of the best ways to determine users' needs is to ask them. If it is unrealistic at this point in your directory-planning process to conduct a general survey of your users, begin with an unscientific sample that includes your co-workers and friends and expand your survey later. Some good questions to ask users to help deduce their directory- related needs are these:

  • How would you make use of a directory if you had access to one?

  • What kind of data about other people would you like to have access to?

  • What kinds of information do you expect to find in a directory?

  • What data about yourself would you like to see published in a directory for others to use?

  • What applications could benefit from being directory-enabled ? How do you expect such applications to behave?

  • How could a directory help you get your own work done more efficiently ?

  • How often will you search for or read information from the directory?

  • How often will you make changes to directory information?

  • How would you like to access directory information?

Keep in mind that you will need to provide more context and some additional explanations for users who are unfamiliar with the concept of a directory service. It is also useful to ask yourself these same questions ( putting yourself in the users' shoes) and think about how you expect users to take advantage of the directory service in the future. As someone in the process of becoming a directory expert (or who is one already), you almost certainly have ideas that your users do not.

In addition to or instead of directly asking users about their needs, you should ask administrators of existing systems about the needs of the users they support. Managers and directors of specific departments are also a good source of information about the people who work for them. Talking to people who support or manage users is an especially valuable approach if your directory deployment will replace one or more existing proprietary directories. For example, the people who administer an electronic mail system should have some insight into how the users they support would use the new directory service.

Accuracy and Completeness of Data

One area that users often have great expectations for (even if it is not mentioned explicitly) is the completeness and accuracy of the data stored in the directory service. Many people expect the data to be very complete and up-to-date, and they may become disillusioned with your service if they discover otherwise . For example, one of the most common reasons users access a directory service is to look up contact information about other people, including voice and fax telephone numbers , email addresses, and postal mailing addresses. If the information in your directory is incomplete or stale, people will quickly learn to not trust your directory service.

Because users may not volunteer these data-related expectations, be sure to ask them in a way that makes sense to them. For example, a question like "What is the maximum tolerable propagation delay when replicating directory data?" is much more intimidating than one like "If you change your telephone number, how soon do you expect the change to appear in all the online systems?" Even better is to provide choices for the user, such as "Within five minutes," "Within one hour ," and "The same day."

Privacy

Another interesting and sometimes contentious set of user needs and expectations is centered on personal privacy. Because your directory service will probably store some data about each person in your organization, it is important to ask your users about their privacy expectations. Some users will be relatively unconcerned about who has access to personal information, whereas others will be very concerned .

When asking people about their privacy concerns, be sure to explain what data you plan to store and to whom you plan to grant access. A lack of understanding of the needs and expectations surrounding personal privacy can lead to some unpleasant political problems as you begin to deploy your directory, so be sure to put some thought into it during the design process. The topic of privacy is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 11.

Audience

Next , consider how broad the audience for your directory service might become. For example, will the service be accessible only to people inside your organization, or do you plan to replicate some information to a server outside your firewall? If your site does not have a firewall, the audience for the directory service potentially includes everyone on the Internet, although access control could be used to restrict the audience. It is up to you to decide who the important members of your user base are and design an appropriate service. Access control rules may be used, for example, to limit access given to anonymous users of the directory.

Also consider any special needs of your users. For example, in a multinational corporation, the directory service must serve people who come from a variety of cultural backgrounds; thus, differences in language, privacy expectations, laws, and other areas may be important.

The Relationship of User Needs to Application Needs

User needs and application needs are often tied together. Most directory-enabled applications ultimately serve a set of users, so some of your user needs come to your service indirectly via the needs of applications. You should work with those responsible for deploying the applications to understand how the needs of the users of each application impact the design of your directory service.

It is also important to consider the needs of the system administrators of your directory-enabled applications and all the other administrators within your organization. The directory service itself and the tools provided for maintenance of it must ultimately meet the needs of both end users and all the different kinds of administrators within your organization. For example, you may need to develop a special tool that Help Desk personnel can use to easily reset an end user's directory password. The needs of system administrators often lead to some deployment constraints, as discussed in the next major section of this chapter.

Prioritizing Your Users' Needs

As for all directory needs, you should try to order the list of users' needs by importance. The process of setting priorities is based partly on fairness (for example, "Many people mentioned this need.") and partly on politics (for example, "The director of my department thinks this is very important."). Try to be realistic about what you can accomplish, but also be careful not to place a lower priority on a user's need just because you don't agree that it is important.



Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services,  2002 New Riders Publishing
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Index terms contained in this section

accuracy
          user needs
applications
         needs
                    user needs
audiences
          user needs
data
         completeness
                    user needs
defining
         directory needs
                    user needs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th
feedback
          user 2nd
needs
         application
                    user needs
         directories
                    user needs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th
          user
                    accuracy and completeness of data
                    application needs
                    audiences
                    prioritizing
                    privacy
                    soliciting feedback 2nd
prioritizing
          user needs
privacy
          user needs
security
         user needs
                    privacy 2nd
users
          needs
                    accuracy and completeness of data
                    application needs
                    audiences
                    prioritizing
                    privacy
                    soliciting feedback 2nd

2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.



Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services
Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672323168
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1997
Pages: 245

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