At work I deal a lot with people who need things, that is, they have requirements. But most people mix requirements and design (presumably because everyone is a freaking problem solver), that is, they often tell me how they want something done, not what they want.

Pause here and consider how many times you’ve committed this error. Don’t think about work only, we present requirements to others all the time. Like when you ask your bank for something. Or when you ask your friend for a favor.

The danger in doing so, of course, is that by providing a design you’re constraining whoever will address your requirement (what if there is several ways to get what you want done and you’re forcing them down one path for no reason which may be costly?) and–more importantly–that you’re not really thinking about what it is you truly want.

A good tactic to address this problem, once you detect it, is to explicitly ask whoever gives you requirements to tell you what they want and not how they want you to do this.

An even better tactic that I started using is to ask them what they don’t want. I found that when I phrased it that way, people moved away from the how.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 18:35 and is filed under discovery, for reflection, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.