I was recently asked to produce an online questionnaire in order to determine the IT skill levels of the IT Support Staff, with a web front end, a back end SQL database and an MS Access admin area. So far, no problem.
Now I’m good at what I do, having a LOT of experience and so I was able to create a questionnaire that allowed users to log in, choose which sets of questions (Hardware, OS, Programming, Applications etc) to be asked according to their expertise. In addition, it allowed users to part fill the questionnaire and come back later to complete it.
The data it generated (skill-level ratings from None to Expert) was perfectly suited to queries allowing people to identify skill gaps for training, pick out teams of people for upcoming projects etc etc etc.
Then it went to committee. I have now been given sets of questions put together by this committee. After removing the repetitions (the ambiguous ‘Do you have hardware skills?’ was in there FOUR times!!) and the outright nonsense (“I don’t know about MS Office” – that’s a question??), I am left with something that is ineffective, almost peurile and under no circumstances useful. To gain anything out of it, the analysis has to be qualitative rather than quantitative and any question asked of the data will need to be carefully crafted by an Access expert (of which there are few here).
What do I do? Do I say ‘No’ and withdraw from the project (not a good idea)? Do I do it but refuse to put my name to it (that’s feasible, but those in the know will know it’s my work)? Do I just grin and bear it?
What would you do?