Are You Listening?
© 2003 Esther Derby
This column originally appeared in STQE Jan/Feb 2003
This summer I had a rare-for-me experience. I had the opportunity to be THE CUSTOMER on a software development effort. I don't mean buying a box of off-the-shelf software - you know, MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, Quicken - I mean a real development project for my Web site. I say opportunity because it never happened. Here's the way my conversation went when I contacted Web site specialist Cecil about the project.
"Hi, Cecil. I'd like to add a search capability to the articles page on my website," I said.
Cecil launched: "Well, the thing about search engines is that you have to register with each one and re-submit..."
"Ahem," I interrupted. "Perhaps I wasn't clear. I want people who come to my site to be able to search for articled on my site. I want site visitors to see a list of all the articles and be able to choose one to read - just like I have it now - but I also want them to be able to search for articles on a certain topic."
"Oh, well, then what you want is a self-administered database," Cecil said.
"I'm not sure I need a database. I've been doing fine uploading the articles with FTP. Plus there's only one author since it's my site," I said. "I know I've seen other sites with search capabilities. Can't the visitor's search by topic without the whole database thing?"
"You don't understand," Cecil said "We're database gurus! We could convert your entire website to a database and then you could update the content... ."
"Thanks, Cecil. I'll get back to you," I said. I hung up the phone and sighed.
It felt like Cecil hadn't heard much of what I'd said, and wasn't interested in what I needed or wanted. I was frustrated and discouraged. If you notice your customers seem frustrated when you are defining requirements (or worse, after you've delivered the system), consider making a shift in how you go about understanding customer needs.
Ask wide open questions to explore
Open-ended and context free questions can help us explore what our customers want:
1) What problem are you hoping to solve?
2) What does a successful solution look like?
3) How will the system be different from what you have now?
These questions may seem sort of wide open ... and they are. These are good questions to ask at the beginning a project to understand where the customer is coming from and where they want to go.
Manage expectations
Chances are you won't be able to deliver on everything your customer wants. But when you have the information, you can begin to manage expectations.
I had customer back in the early 80s who wanted to be able to talk to the computer and have it do what he asked it to do. Speech recognition was just coming out of the research labs, and there was no way I could deliver what he wanted with the resources available ($20,000 and a CICS mainframe system with dumb terminals!). But because I knew that was what the really wanted, we were about to have the conversation about whether that was achievable. He still wanted speech recognition, but because he had been listened to, he accepted that it wasn't possible at that time.
Understand priorities
What is most important to the customer? If you can deliver the top 10 items on a 50 item list will the customer be satisfied? If you get to the other 40, that's great; if you don't, you've still delivered value. But if you start with item 35 or 49, no matter how nifty it is, the customer won't be satisfied.
By the way, I still don't have a search capability on my website. I decided Cecil would lead me down a rabbit trait of nifty technology that was more than I needed and not what I wanted. Maybe he'll read this article :-).
This column originally appeared in STQE Jan/Feb 2003
This summer I had a rare-for-me experience. I had the opportunity to be THE CUSTOMER on a software development effort. I don't mean buying a box of off-the-shelf software - you know, MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, Quicken - I mean a real development project for my Web site. I say opportunity because it never happened. Here's the way my conversation went when I contacted Web site specialist Cecil about the project.
"Hi, Cecil. I'd like to add a search capability to the articles page on my website," I said.
Cecil launched: "Well, the thing about search engines is that you have to register with each one and re-submit..."
"Ahem," I interrupted. "Perhaps I wasn't clear. I want people who come to my site to be able to search for articled on my site. I want site visitors to see a list of all the articles and be able to choose one to read - just like I have it now - but I also want them to be able to search for articles on a certain topic."
"Oh, well, then what you want is a self-administered database," Cecil said.
"I'm not sure I need a database. I've been doing fine uploading the articles with FTP. Plus there's only one author since it's my site," I said. "I know I've seen other sites with search capabilities. Can't the visitor's search by topic without the whole database thing?"
"You don't understand," Cecil said "We're database gurus! We could convert your entire website to a database and then you could update the content... ."
"Thanks, Cecil. I'll get back to you," I said. I hung up the phone and sighed.
It felt like Cecil hadn't heard much of what I'd said, and wasn't interested in what I needed or wanted. I was frustrated and discouraged. If you notice your customers seem frustrated when you are defining requirements (or worse, after you've delivered the system), consider making a shift in how you go about understanding customer needs.
Ask wide open questions to explore
Open-ended and context free questions can help us explore what our customers want:
1) What problem are you hoping to solve?
2) What does a successful solution look like?
3) How will the system be different from what you have now?
These questions may seem sort of wide open ... and they are. These are good questions to ask at the beginning a project to understand where the customer is coming from and where they want to go.
Manage expectations
Chances are you won't be able to deliver on everything your customer wants. But when you have the information, you can begin to manage expectations.
I had customer back in the early 80s who wanted to be able to talk to the computer and have it do what he asked it to do. Speech recognition was just coming out of the research labs, and there was no way I could deliver what he wanted with the resources available ($20,000 and a CICS mainframe system with dumb terminals!). But because I knew that was what the really wanted, we were about to have the conversation about whether that was achievable. He still wanted speech recognition, but because he had been listened to, he accepted that it wasn't possible at that time.
Understand priorities
What is most important to the customer? If you can deliver the top 10 items on a 50 item list will the customer be satisfied? If you get to the other 40, that's great; if you don't, you've still delivered value. But if you start with item 35 or 49, no matter how nifty it is, the customer won't be satisfied.
By the way, I still don't have a search capability on my website. I decided Cecil would lead me down a rabbit trait of nifty technology that was more than I needed and not what I wanted. Maybe he'll read this article :-).
浙公网安备 33010602011771号