Give a little at a time rather than taking away

Give a little at a time rather than taking away

I'm sure there's research somewhere that explains this phenomenon*, but in my experience, most people are more bothered when you take something away from them than they are when you give them very little to start with and add as needed.

Here's what I've seen: if you give your database users full access to everything (e.g., full admin rights), and then at some point decide to take some of that access away, even if they never used the functionality you're taking away, they will perceive this as a slight or punishment or a loss.

On the other hand, if you give them very limited rights and then add more rights as they are needed, you'll hear very little complaining at all.

So when you're implementing a new AMS, or you're adding new users to an existing system, start by giving the users as little access as possible and add more as they need it, rather than giving them everything and taking things away. Everyone will be much happier!

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*It turns out this phenomenon is called "loss aversion."

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