Object Mentor Blog: Oh you poor, poor customer

Oh you poor, poor customer

Brett Schuchert — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:12:00 -0600

I just got back from my third time at the AYE conference and it was another great time. I had a real eye-opening experience on Wednesday and it had to do with how I interact with customers, QA and even developers. Pretty much anybody taking a class or starting a project where I am involved.

I participated in a simulation of a project, playing the role of customer.

There were two of us playing customers – we did not understand the problem and we did not necessarily agree or understand where we had different interpretations
We were freshly assigned the role and did not quite understand the details of the problem, our actual responsibility or how to interact with the team (a deficit of tacit knowledge)
Time was (perceived to be) at a premium

The session/simulation was run with great expertise by Don Gray.

My first really strong observation was during the first meeting with the development group – about 5 minutes in. My co-customer and I had spent a few minutes (literally) reading the requirements and coming to some partial understanding. We met with the “simulated” development team and all hell broke loose (at least in my head).

The development team did some things well.

They tried to think of something small they could do in a time-box.
They presented us (the customers) with concrete examples of things they could do as first examples.
They asked concrete questions about the requirements.
The presented some preliminary examples of possible interpretations.

These are all good things; things I would and have recommend in the past – and will contine to do in the future. And these things did not work for me.

“Playing” the role of customer, when I came to that initial meeting there were many things in flux.

I did not really have much of an idea of a time-box.
I had looked at the problem in a very different way than the development team, so many of their questions simply did not make any sense to me.
I felt bombarded by many voices, with many different kinds and levels of content.

I took away quite a bit away from that experience that I’d do well to incorporate in my future interactions.

I am a big-time extravert (Jung’s definition) and I’ve been the source of this kind of bombardment.
I need to catch myself jumping right in on what I think is important and instead ask what is important to the customer (or BA or QA or developer for that matter).
I probably have overly high expectations of what can be accomplished before the team has started to form, much of that initial interaction lacks the tacit knowledge of actual roles and requirements, such that many things are in flux.
Or, given a team that has been together, I need to get a grasp on its structure before making change recommendations.

At one point, someone mentioned (in essence) that the “actual” requirements were coming from Don, not me, and essentially wrote me off. That was quite a powerful experience as I felt completely devalued as the customer. I can imagine a business person or QA person feeling the same thing.

I think the biggest one-word summary of the experience for me is empathy.

“After” the simulation (I still had not fully decompressed I think), one person expressed concern over how the customers (me) had not followed “the process”. Wow is all I can say to my experience during that simple, loaded phrase.

In my world of the simulation, there was no process – explicit or implicit. If there was one used by the team, it was tacit and I certainly was not aware of it (in fact, I don’t think there was one “the process” as far as I could tell because I was able to both participate and observe). But regardless of whether there was or was not an explicit or implicit process, it does not matter. Can you imagine someone who is not fully available (a customer), being treated as if they were “not following the process?”, which I inferred to mean “I was being difficult.”

When I’ve thought that, consciously or even subconsciously, I’m certain that belief clouded my interactions with other people and it probably has come across as aggressive/offensive/inconsiderate. Maybe a good mantra to repeat to myself is something like:

No matter how it might look, people are trying to be helpful to the best of their ability.

I know for certain my intentions during that simulation were good. I was trying to give information to the best of my abilities. I just wasn’t yet aware of the requirements and I did not know how the development team was working. To be treated as if I was sabotaging “the process” was in fact quite offensive to me. I am certain I’ve done that over the years. “The process”, regardless of which process it is, is a model of how to do things. And something I overheard really speaks about this:

All models are wrong; some are useful.

(Notice how that applies to things like TDD, BDD, Scrum, XP, ...?-)

If you have a chance to attend AYE next year (or PSL in May), I’d encourage you to do so. But be prepared to be overwhelmed with personal observations.

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Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:08:14 -0500

Although they didn’t show you enough empathy, the still assessed the situation correctly. Empathy is great but more valuable is how to treat people who think they have something to contribute but really don’t. If you aren’t giving the team viable information, surely you are subtley sabotaging “the process” (whatever that may be).

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