Your Customer is Not Your Customer !

Posted by admin on June 29, 2009 under Software Architect | Be the First to Comment

As you work in requirements meetings to design software pretend that your customer is not your customer. It turns out that this is a very easy thing to do because it is true.

Your customer is not your customer. Your customer’s customer is your customer. If your customer’s customer wins your customer wins. Which means you win.

If you re writing an e-commerce application take care of the things that you know people who will shop at that site will need. They will need transport security. They’ll need encryption of stored data. Your customer may not mention these requirements. If you know that your customer is leaving out things your customer s customer will need address them and communicate why.

If your customer willingly and knowingly doesn t care about certain important things that your customer s customer cares about as happens from time to time consider stepping away from the project. Just because Sally Customer doesn’t want to pay for SSL every year and wants to store credit cards in plain text because it costs less to build it s not okay to just agree. You re killing your customer s customer when you agree to work you know is a bad idea.

Requirements gathering meetings are not implementation meetings. Forbid the customer’s use of implementation specific terms unless it’s an absolute or well understood problem. Allow your customer to express only the Platonic ideal his concept and goals rather than dictating a solution or even using technical terms.

So how do you maintain such discipline in these meetings which can be deceptively difficult Remember to care for your customer’s customer. Remember that while your customer is writing your check you must be clear that you need to honor best practices so that you can make what the customer really needs not just what they say they need. Of course this takes lots of discussion and clarity as to exactly what you re doing and why.

Perhaps as with so many things in life this is best clarified by a poem. In 1649 Richard Lovelace wrote To Lucasta on Going to the Wars . It ends with the line I could not love thee dear so much Loved I not honor more.

We cannot love our customers so much love we not their customers more.

-- By Eben Hewitt