Dogfooding, as in use your own software, is a great way to find the pain points in your product. When you build a project management tool you could track its progress within that tool. If you are annoyed to insert the same values over and over again so might be your users. To improve this small part not only makes your life easier, but also helps the other users.
Unfortunately not every developer builds a product where he or she belongs to the target audience. You still can use the tool, but you never have the same perspective – your knowledge of how it is build and should be used constantly interferes. There is however another way to get a first-hand experience: the help desk.
Meet your Help Desk
The place where all the problems with your application come together in (desperate) need of help is the place you should go. Here you can close the knowledge gap and see how your software is really used.
To fully profit from the help desk you have to answer the questions yourself. It’s not enough to sit there and watch the support staff do their work. You have to talk to the users directly and phrase your answers in a way they can understand. Neither Clean Code nor design patterns can be used to justify why they must change their behaviour. If you can’t find a reasonable answer you may have found a problem with the user experience.
It doesn’t matter how big that help desk is or if you use phone or email. The important part is that you try to solve the problems your users have. If you repeatedly answer the same questions or provide a workaround for the same problems then you know what part of your software needs to improve.
Conclusion
Your help desk is not the place you go to get an overall picture of your product. There you only find those users who have a problem or can’t do their work. But the help desk is a great place to learn what doesn’t work and where you should improve your product. And don’t forget to come back – the next batch of problems is waiting.