4 ms·

The best software is developed by people who have deep knowledge about the use case and/or the ultimate customer. What proportion of PMs at health software comp

by axg11 4y ago

The best software is developed by people who have deep knowledge about the use case and/or the ultimate customer. What proportion of PMs at health software companies have worked in a hospital? I'd wager it's vanishingly small.

vsareto 4y ago
This removes healthcare workers from the workforce though, and we need healthcare workers more than PMs with direct experience. They would need to be good PMs on top of being good healthcare workers and I don't think you're going to find that as often as you think.
YPPH 4y ago
I agree. Many general practitioners in Australia use the same practice management software which was initially developed by an unsatisfied general practitioner who taught himself programming. He also kept practicing medicine which is really impressive.
mattnewton 4y ago
I think you can hire people who know the market in their bones from hard-fought experience, but you could also contract out some user experience researchers to shadow these people and tell you everything you need to fix. I have to imagine a healthcare worker turned PM has to be rare and expensive that they cost more than contracting out research. The reason both don’t happen is probably that they are expensive to do (and expensive to execute on the information you find). I don’t have any knowledge of the healthcare software market, but my guess is that being easier to use for the rank and file probably isn’t as big a differentiator to the administrators purchasing the software as costs are. This is pretty common when you have software that is purchased by administrators for others, especially highly regulated software.
jrockway 4y ago
My take from this paper is that a PM just needs to deploy the usual impossible UX trifecta: make it fast, make it easy, integrate all the different systems from other vendors. These are all obviously very hard to do, and you have to really want them yourself or they won't happen. I'm surprised how controversial speedy UIs are, for example. JIRA is the most popular issue tracking system, and it's just SLOW compared to newer things like Linear. I see JIRA and would immediately disqualify it for use because the UI is so slow; it takes a minute to enter a bug, or a three-screen process to move a bug from one team to another, etc. But it has every feature people are looking for on its little checklist, so it gets chosen over systems that are speedy and productive. If you're doing electronic medical records, you need to implement all those long-tail features, and you need to make it fast. Paper is fast. You can't make logins take 1 minute, they need to happen in milliseconds. You can't discard peoples progress when they move to a different workstation. Things like that; the PM just has to say "no, this isn't acceptable", and find a team that can implement it well. I guess this doesn't happen, and look at the mess that it created.
- axg11 4y ago
  This is a great point - too many companies forget to optimize for speed of UX. My theory is because speed of UX isn't a strong selling point to decision makers. JIRA sells well because it's a safe choice (recent fuckups not-withstanding) and is very full featured. Speed of UX matters for the end user, unfortunately too often the end user has no say in the software they're using.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > a PM just needs to deploy the usual impossible UX trifecta: make it fast, make it easy, integrate all the different systems from other vendors. The problem here is we're talking government software, or IT-as-a-cost-center software. So the buyer is looking at the cheapest bidder. They aren't getting a team like those who solved the UX trifecta in the past (looking at the iPhone team at Apple here). > Paper is fast. You can't make logins take 1 minute, they need to happen in milliseconds. You can't discard peoples progress when they move to a different workstation. Paper isn't fast, it's cached. Parsing, archiving and indexing of paper is extremely slow (when actually done). The slowness of input in a computer system might annoy the user but the system overall is way more efficient. Now auth taking more than a second or two is just lazy programming (bet it's not exactly Google caliber engineers working on the project). > the PM just has to say "no, this isn't acceptable", and find a team that can implement it well. The problem here is he'll have to 10x the budget.
reaperducer 4y ago
What proportion of PMs at health software companies have worked in a hospital? Probably very few. But it really depends on the company. The healthcare company I work for requires everyone from the CEO down to low-grade button pushers like myself to work with actual patients a few days a year. It's not a lot, in terms of hours, but the exposure changes the way you think and do your work for the rest of the year. I know that each year after I've done my three days, I come back to the computer with a whole list of web site improvements in my head. More on topic, even though we're in an "information age," it's important for healthcare organizations to work harder and harder to accommodate the fewer and fewer people without access to technology, simply because those are almost always the people who are poorer and in bad health, who need us the most. Right now, there are 50,000,000 Americans without internet access of any sort. Not at home, not at work, not on a phone.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  > The healthcare company I work for requires everyone from the CEO down to low-grade button pushers like myself to work with actual patients a few days a year. This is interesting. I assume you are in some IT or software role? If so, what is it that they actually trust you to do around patients? How do the "real" healthcare workers treat you?
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    I assume you are in some IT or software role? Yes. what is it that they actually trust you to do around patients? It varies from year to year, but is always interacting directly with them. I've been hugged, cried on, held people's babies while they (the parents) vomited in the hallways, had people rant at me in languages I don't understand. All kinds of human activity. How do the "real" healthcare workers treat you? They pretty much ignore me. I expect on some level, they're happy to have someone picking up the details so they can do other things, but for the most part they seem far too busy to even notice that I'm there.
nradov 4y ago
I don't know the percentage, but healthcare software vendors absolutely do hire experienced clinicians as Product Managers when they can. But it's hard. There are few such employees available, they're expensive, and most don't understand the product development process. Furthermore their experience sometimes isn't even very relevant: someone who spent 10 years as an obstetrics nurse won't necessarily understand oncology workflows. Often a better option is to hire several practicing clinicians across different specialties as part time consultants on an advisory council. That way you can gather ideas and get rapid feedback on product concepts without involving them directly in the development process.

by axg11 4y ago

vsareto 4y ago

This removes healthcare workers from the workforce though, and we need healthcare workers more than PMs with direct experience. They would need to be good PMs on top of being good healthcare workers and I don't think you're going to find that as often as you think.

YPPH 4y ago

I agree. Many general practitioners in Australia use the same practice management software which was initially developed by an unsatisfied general practitioner who taught himself programming. He also kept practicing medicine which is really impressive.

mattnewton 4y ago

I think you can hire people who know the market in their bones from hard-fought experience, but you could also contract out some user experience researchers to shadow these people and tell you everything you need to fix. I have to imagine a healthcare worker turned PM has to be rare and expensive that they cost more than contracting out research. The reason both don’t happen is probably that they are expensive to do (and expensive to execute on the information you find). I don’t have any knowledge of the healthcare software market, but my guess is that being easier to use for the rank and file probably isn’t as big a differentiator to the administrators purchasing the software as costs are. This is pretty common when you have software that is purchased by administrators for others, especially highly regulated software.

jrockway 4y ago

My take from this paper is that a PM just needs to deploy the usual impossible UX trifecta: make it fast, make it easy, integrate all the different systems from other vendors. These are all obviously very hard to do, and you have to really want them yourself or they won't happen. I'm surprised how controversial speedy UIs are, for example. JIRA is the most popular issue tracking system, and it's just SLOW compared to newer things like Linear. I see JIRA and would immediately disqualify it for use because the UI is so slow; it takes a minute to enter a bug, or a three-screen process to move a bug from one team to another, etc. But it has every feature people are looking for on its little checklist, so it gets chosen over systems that are speedy and productive. If you're doing electronic medical records, you need to implement all those long-tail features, and you need to make it fast. Paper is fast. You can't make logins take 1 minute, they need to happen in milliseconds. You can't discard peoples progress when they move to a different workstation. Things like that; the PM just has to say "no, this isn't acceptable", and find a team that can implement it well. I guess this doesn't happen, and look at the mess that it created.

axg11 4y ago
This is a great point - too many companies forget to optimize for speed of UX. My theory is because speed of UX isn't a strong selling point to decision makers. JIRA sells well because it's a safe choice (recent fuckups not-withstanding) and is very full featured. Speed of UX matters for the end user, unfortunately too often the end user has no say in the software they're using.
908B64B197 4y ago
> a PM just needs to deploy the usual impossible UX trifecta: make it fast, make it easy, integrate all the different systems from other vendors. The problem here is we're talking government software, or IT-as-a-cost-center software. So the buyer is looking at the cheapest bidder. They aren't getting a team like those who solved the UX trifecta in the past (looking at the iPhone team at Apple here). > Paper is fast. You can't make logins take 1 minute, they need to happen in milliseconds. You can't discard peoples progress when they move to a different workstation. Paper isn't fast, it's cached. Parsing, archiving and indexing of paper is extremely slow (when actually done). The slowness of input in a computer system might annoy the user but the system overall is way more efficient. Now auth taking more than a second or two is just lazy programming (bet it's not exactly Google caliber engineers working on the project). > the PM just has to say "no, this isn't acceptable", and find a team that can implement it well. The problem here is he'll have to 10x the budget.

reaperducer 4y ago

What proportion of PMs at health software companies have worked in a hospital? Probably very few. But it really depends on the company. The healthcare company I work for requires everyone from the CEO down to low-grade button pushers like myself to work with actual patients a few days a year. It's not a lot, in terms of hours, but the exposure changes the way you think and do your work for the rest of the year. I know that each year after I've done my three days, I come back to the computer with a whole list of web site improvements in my head. More on topic, even though we're in an "information age," it's important for healthcare organizations to work harder and harder to accommodate the fewer and fewer people without access to technology, simply because those are almost always the people who are poorer and in bad health, who need us the most. Right now, there are 50,000,000 Americans without internet access of any sort. Not at home, not at work, not on a phone.

ElevenLathe 4y ago
> The healthcare company I work for requires everyone from the CEO down to low-grade button pushers like myself to work with actual patients a few days a year. This is interesting. I assume you are in some IT or software role? If so, what is it that they actually trust you to do around patients? How do the "real" healthcare workers treat you?
- reaperducer 4y ago
  I assume you are in some IT or software role? Yes. what is it that they actually trust you to do around patients? It varies from year to year, but is always interacting directly with them. I've been hugged, cried on, held people's babies while they (the parents) vomited in the hallways, had people rant at me in languages I don't understand. All kinds of human activity. How do the "real" healthcare workers treat you? They pretty much ignore me. I expect on some level, they're happy to have someone picking up the details so they can do other things, but for the most part they seem far too busy to even notice that I'm there.

nradov 4y ago

I don't know the percentage, but healthcare software vendors absolutely do hire experienced clinicians as Product Managers when they can. But it's hard. There are few such employees available, they're expensive, and most don't understand the product development process. Furthermore their experience sometimes isn't even very relevant: someone who spent 10 years as an obstetrics nurse won't necessarily understand oncology workflows. Often a better option is to hire several practicing clinicians across different specialties as part time consultants on an advisory council. That way you can gather ideas and get rapid feedback on product concepts without involving them directly in the development process.