Explore demand conversations
Pan Jiayu Xiong / translation
This article published on the June 2004 "Programmer" magazine, copyright, unauthorized, banned any form of reprint, violations!
On March 19, 2004, Mr. Winberg was invited to make an exchange of "exploration requirements" through remote audio and developers, many developers benefited much. To this end, we translated this exchange record, we can understand the idea of the master.
Repeated things are not true demand to persuade customers to give up unrealistic needs?
Another good question! This is what I just said. The best way is that I call "orange juice test". You can find this method in my "Secret" book, and that books are more detailed. Basic ideas are: Tell customers, we can meet their needs, but this requires costs. If you don't tell them the costs you need, they certainly don't know if the needs are unrealistic. However, judging whether the demand is unrealistic is not the responsibility of the engineer, because the engineer doesn't know how much money is worth it, they only know how much it takes to meet the needs.
Here is a trouble. I don't know how it is in China, but in the United States, sometimes this situation, like some government agencies, customers do not actually pay for software development. Software developers are only told to develop software for these customers, but they have no money transactions with customers. In this case, it is extremely difficult to let customers give up unrealistic demand because they don't need to spend money. In this case, you must find another type of cost. In most cases, the best way is time. So, we can say this to our customers: "We can do this according to your requirements, but this may have to extend your project for two years, or three months." Customers will say, "Hey, I can't wait for so long. "Then they will give up. Next you can negotiate with them.
Another way is to tell your customers, because of the changes in demand, some important functionality or characteristics will change. So you can say this to the customer, "If we do this, the system will slow down, you need three times time to respond." If the customer can tolerate a slow system, it may give up their initial unrealistic needs.
Or you can say this, "We can do it, but if we do this, you can't do anything else. What should you see?" They will choose to abandon some of these requirements and make demand more practical. But to remember this important point: engineers can't judge what is practical, you can only tell the cost of customer needs, they will look at the cost is worth it, then make a decision. In my "Quality · Software · Management" series, you can learn these knowledge.
Here, there are two pictures to help you. A picture is how much the cost is required, and the other figure is the value value of the demand. If you can build these two pictures for our customers, it is easy to persuade them.
Usually customers will choose some products themselves, but maybe these products can not meet the needs of the project, what should I do?
You can use the methods I have just recommended. Usually, the cost of the product, or the cost of buying products is not just the product itself. There is also a big training cost. If the product itself has a defect, it is also required to be maintained, or it will lead to a database crash is also a cost. These are almost a meaning. So you really need to put forward to the customer, what kind of results will they cause. But in the end, it is still told by them, you can tell them that this situation is very bad, extremely bad. Sometimes you need this, "I don't know how to do it." They are likely to do it because you don't know how to do it, or maybe they find out what others tell you, so you will be happy to do it. No one can let you create a system you don't know how to do it. How do I tell if the customer tells us that they really need?
This involves many problems. I don't dare to definite your meaning.
The situation can be your customer just not know what they really needs. They don't know what you can do. This is a case. Another situation is that they do know, but they didn't tell you. They lie to you or they hide certain things. These conditions are different, and there are different signs in each case.
If your customers don't understand what their needs, you will often see them repeated. At this time you can make things more accurate by questioning. This is part of the formal process seeking some people. I will give you an example.
Maybe the most common example is that we find someone to say, "We need a fast system." Look, we don't know what "fast" means anything. This "fast" is related to some speeds of their minds. For some people, it is slow to others. So you have to find a clearer fact. You may need to test it because they may not know. A good solution is that you can do a system prototype and then change the speed so they can see and feel the results of some and slow. This way you can find true needs.
How do I use the "exploration needs" in daily life or use to help others?
Here, I want to give some examples, about how I use some of the principles of "exploration demand" in daily life. There are some very interesting things. I and my wife, I have been married for 42 years. OK for 43 years, this can be a short time for Americans. We are very happy together, but we have some problems like most marriages. One of the questions that lasted for a few years, we decided to watch the movie, and then I want to see this movie, and the other wants to see another. Decide which we want to see which is too difficult, so we start learning how to understand each other's needs, and we want to see this or that movie, and how much compromise we can make for that or this movie. So I will say that since we learned this method, the marriage is more happy.
Ok, when I exchange something with others, or if I am buying clothes ... I used to waste a lot of money, come to buy some clothes, I don't like it, or wear is not suitable. Over the years, I have learned, use the same technologies and judgment software requirements, to draw their needs. So, how much, I know what I really like and need, it also saves me a lot of money.
I talked about two aspects, a marriage that gave me a happy marriage, another helping me save a lot of money. And this also helps me take care of my children, grandson. I think this is a truly important aspect of life.
