Stop Falling for the Workaround Trap! | John’s Tips 2024W10

“Oh there’s a workaround for that, let’s put that bug back in the backlog”

Does that quote sound familiar to you?

Workarounds in product design are often seen as quick fixes to bugs or gaps in functionality, offering the customer an immediate solution to the problem at hand but at a substantial unseen cost to your company. Relying on these workarounds can significantly divert resources from permanent solutions, leading to increased customer frustration and diminished trust in your product.

While workarounds may be a lifeline to the support member when the customer is trying to get your product to do what they want, they are a crutch that is too often left in place for long periods of time in favour of fixing the issue that is causing the workaround to be needed.

The Hidden Cost of Workarounds

The costs of relying on workarounds can be profound, leading to a significant increase in support and development time as each workaround requires communication, documentation, and possibly customization for various scenarios. This not only burdens your teams but shifts focus away from more critical issues or the development of new features.

Your customers, encountering these workarounds, are constantly reminded of unresolved issues or missing features they desired, leading to frustration, especially when they have to contact support to learn about or report these workarounds. This cycle reinforces the notion that their needs or issues are not being fully addressed.

Imagine a single workaround that’s been reported multiple times, each report requiring attention from both support and development teams, consuming valuable time that could be spent on more impactful work. Often, the effort needed to fix the underlying issue permanently is less than the cumulative time spent managing the workaround.

How can you check if this is a problem?

Conduct an exercise within your organisation to identify the most common workarounds currently in use (speak to your support team, they’ll know!) and assess the time and resources spent on managing them compared to the effort required to resolve the issue permanently. You might find that addressing the root cause is more cost-effective and beneficial for your product’s long-term success.

To manage workarounds effectively, it’s crucial to have a structured approach involving a well-organised database/Ticket/confluence/spreadsheet where each workaround is documented, including the time spent on it, any engineering input required, and communication with customers about the temporary fix. When a permanent fix is implemented, reaching out to every customer already affected by the workaround is vital, enhancing the customer experience by showing that their feedback is valued and has led to tangible improvements in the product.

As I often do to drive home a point, I put myself in the customer’s shoes and imagine a scenario — so I’ll do the same with you.

“You are a daily user of certain software they is missing some key functionality/UX tweaks that cause you to have to spend 5 minutes to do a workaround CX informed you of. 6 months later, you find out a fix was put in place not long after you raised the issue, but since they didn’t track it, they never let you know. You have now potentially wasted 5 minutes of every working day simply because they never let you know.”

How would you feel about the product and their support team at that moment?

Workarounds should never be the default solution; they are merely temporary fixes that often mask deeper issues, potentially leading to more significant problems over time. By adopting a structured approach to manage and eventually eliminate the need for workarounds, you can significantly improve your products’ quality and your customers’ experiences.

For my past tips check out my past posts on Substack, go to my weekly list tip on Medium, or check out the hashtag #JohnsTipOfTheWeek on LinkedIn.