Mandatory fields: quality control or a tax on contributors?

A small tax that adds up

Every mandatory field on a form is a small tax.

Each one feels reasonable on its own. Category. Subcategory. Audience. Product. Version. Review date. Keywords. Approver.

Together they turn a ten-minute job into a thirty-minute one.

And the person you have taxed is the one you most want to hear from: the engineer who has just solved something and has a spare moment to write it down.

What people do instead

Some of them push through. Many quietly give up. A few learn to pick the first option in every drop-down, which gives you the worst of both: the burden and none of the quality.

The honest question

The honest question for each field is plain. What decision does this field help someone make, and who makes it?

If nobody can answer, it should not be mandatory.

Principles that tend to help

• Ask only for what the writer actually knows at the moment of writing.
• Fill in what the system can work out for itself.
• Let reviewers add the rest later, when they have the context.
• Look at what people actually choose. If Other is your most popular category, the form is telling you something.

Where quality really comes from

Quality control matters. But quality comes from the people, the review and the feedback, much more than from the form.

Make the right thing the easy thing.

Next step

Which field on your knowledge form would you remove tomorrow? Join the conversation on ESM's Exchange: https://exchange.esm.institute

Tags: knowledge management, service management, self-service, ESM