Setting Expectations, Part One:
What are reasonable expectations for the reliability of an A/V system?
Bates College has been keeping careful track of the usage of our A/V systems, including failure rates, for the past several months. The results of this exercise have been intriguing. In particular, I was surprised at the reliability of our A/V systems. Over the first three months of classes this year, we have had 4,285 individual uses of A/V technologies in our classroom, with 42 reported technical problems. That is slightly better than a 99% success rate of the systems. While that makes me want to scream success from the rooftops, I can not ignore the fact that there were still 42 times that that the technology did not work. If you happened to be the presenter or instructor one of those 42 times, then the 99% success rate does not impress you very much. After all, it did not work when you needed it!!!
This leads me to one of those rare moments for me when I go back and forth on how I feel about an issue. As a technical person, who understands that sometimes technology fails, and that it's nobody's fault, I think that a 99% success rate is remarkable. Yet, as a person who has given presentations and taught classes, I understand the devastation of having your hour plus talk threatened by failing technology.
In environments like colleges and corporate settings, where there are multiple rooms with A/V that are used very regularly, what are reasonable expectations of the reliability of an A/V system? I think that the expectations will be different for every institution with budget and staffing playing a role in setting expectations. However, here are some thoughts to keep in mind while thinking about expectations:
1. Electronic equipment will fail at some point. So, unless you are willing to install redundant systems in every space, then you have to accept some rate of failure.
2. You have to look at hard data not empirical data. You can not let the person who yelled the loudest when something broke cloud your judgment. You need to develop a tough skin and remember that when A/V fails, it has the potential to ruin an event and make the presenter/lecturer very upset. Therefore, just because six people called your boss over the past six months to scream about A/V not working, does not mean that campus-wide, A/V does not work.
3. If AV and IT have integrated on your campus, leverage that partnership. Talk to end users to help them realize that A/V is IT. Reasonable users recognize that their computers will sometimes malfunction, that is why there is a help desk. They also realize that sometimes the network will have hiccups, phones won't work perfectly, etc. Talk to your IT colleagues about how they set user expectations.
4. Be very open about failures and your plans on how to avoid them or fix them if they happen. Just like a power supply that dies in a computer is not the fault of the computer tech, a power supply in a projector that dies is not the fault of the A/V tech. We should not hide that this has happened, but be very clear about what has happened and how you are prepared to repair or replace quickly.
5. Finally, be very clear about what the costs of higher expectations are to your organization. If more preventative maintenance is required to lower the numbers of failures, then that costs staff time. If you are expected to have hot swaps on hand, then that costs money to purchase the extra equipment. You have to make sure your organization is being realistic in terms of budgeting when setting these expectations.
When this work has been done, make sure that you talk publicly and regularly about expectations, and the reward for this work will be realized. You will have bosses who look at failures as rare occurrences, rather than as regular occurrences. You and your bosses will have actual data to share with presenters/instructors when they experience a failure. Last, but far from least, you will have the satisfaction of knowing the expectations of your campus, and being able to meet those expectations.
Next time, Setting Expectations, Part 2: What are reasonable expectations of end users of A/V systems?
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3 comments:
You've identified one of the most compelling topics in AV end user support. Gene Kranz of mission control for Apollo 13 (the guy in the white vest played by Ed Harris)was to speak to 250 second year b-school students one afternoon. The topic of his talk was, "Failure is Not an Option". Trouble is, his limo driver took the wrong exit and was an hour late arriving. So we had an auditorium filled with 250 Git 'er Done, Type A folks. Luckily, their next destination was to be a barbeque outside near the auditorium, so they went out and ate first, then caught the Kranz lecture upon his arrival. No harm, no foul. But this illustrates that not all failures are created equal. If the projector goes out just as Jack Welch steps to the lecturn, you'll be in a meeting next morning in which redundant projectors will come up for discussion. What's the value of the lost opportunity, the lost class session, the black eye. At the end of the year, the faculty will remember the one time the system betrayed them and will not at all recall all the times it worked. This is human nature. I say boxes are cheap insurance nowadays. They are the commodity, so let's raise our standards for design to include built in hot swaps and one button switches for engaging them that the user can press in an emergency. We can do it, and we shouldn't waste a good crisis. Isn't that what our leaders are telling us in this electoral cycle?
Greg-
thanks for the comments. At Tuck, do you have spaces with redundant technology? should just the projector have a built-in backup, or should every room have a complete (computer, control sytem, touchpanel, dvd, etc) installed backup?
Hi Scott, I was wondering how you got to the 4000+ usage figure? Is this a registrar schedule of class sessions, or a confirmed activation of your installed/portable technology?
Currently, I'm organizing results from metrics gained, similar to yours, which note reported calls to our support line, vs scheduled sessions.
As for redundancy, we do not have it generally, except for dual screen rooms of course. We do stock back ups for hot replacments.
But for classroom support in general, we take it very seriously, and a classroom emergency call requires immediate support. Steps are:
1. Conversational via phone, based on classroom instructions, this solves a decent percentage of issues.
2. Remote management. We utilize Crestron Roomview and in a few cases, Extron Global viewer, and can remotely assist with many issues. This does help to a reasonable extent, but we'd like more. It seems there can be some breaks and anomalies in the remote view into the room. We're working with Crestron on their product, which is the more robust of the two.
3. On site assistance: We have a 90 second rule, and if we cannot solve the problem in 90 seconds, we dispatch someone to the room. This is not a perfect solution, because often it's a student working. But even at that level, they can usually solve the difficulty more efficiently than faculty.
We support 146 rooms, with 2.5 FTE. Our dept works in a number of other areas, so our FTE committment is an estimate. I'm intersted in how the FTE vs rooms supported numbers balance out at other colleges and universities.
Thanks, Tim
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