Customers generally have no problem letting me know what they want. Even if their specifications are vague, by asking a few questions, I can usually get things nailed down.
Until we get to the "where's the data" part. Why is it that customers who ask for a product that does two hundred and seventeen things and also washes your dishes seem to think that the data will just "magically" appear? What's even worse are the clients who don't know what their data is until you slowly, painfully show them the light.
Me: Is the price attached to the product, or will different options of colors and sizes affect the price?
Him: For 99.9% of the products, options will not affect the price.
Me (after a slight pause): Then can you give me any examples of a product whose prices will change if the options change?
Him: There aren't any.
Hedge Fun
petdance on 2003-07-29T15:48:39
Yeah, they don't like to think in absolutes, so they hedge, so they need to realize that there's a cost involved."We might maybe potentially possibly add some Foo down the road, some time, in the future, but we're not sure when, if ever.""OK, so should we also build into the system the capability of handling Foo? I'll need to revise estimates of the project, but offhand I'd say it'll be at least two more weeks. It'll be harder to maintain, too, but I can't quite put a time on that." (or $x,000 more dollars)
"Oh, don't do that."
Any feature costs time/money. Once you point out that they're asking for a room in the house that they'll never use, they usually don't mind dropping the room from the blueprints.
Re:Hedging
lachoy on 2003-07-29T16:07:49
Sometimes hedging is a good thing, particularly when it's from the motivations you've named. Other times it's a knee-jerk CYA reaction because saying "sometimes" means you can duck responsibility when someone later calls you on it. (No, I'm not bitter...)Of course, the counterattack for this is to pin them down on what "sometimes" means, how often it happens, how to recognize it, etc., as others have discussed here.
