Attention

Astute awareness of communicated information

Attention expresses curiosity and a focus on an organization’s solution needs. It improves the coverage of those needs.

Examples

Discovering what an organization needs from a solution demands extra time and attention from its stakeholders. Business analysts pay close attention to stakeholders to get their needs right the first time.

Attention to detail in design and development increases the value of the solution to the organization.

Attention in Purposeful Architect

Click a title to see excerpts

Your Second Deliverable: Attention (Key Story) excerpts:

Paying close attention to a customer's needs and goals shows stakeholders how undivided attention benefits everyone.

Emily asks each member of the team what outcomes they expect from the project. She asks about their role in achieving the outcome. She pays as much attention to an end user as she does to an executive. This surprises some team members. They expected her to state her goals in the project, without paying so much attention to their goals. When they noticed that Emily cared about their goals, they paid more attention to her. She explained how her company's product would enable the outcomes they wanted. She put her goals for their project only in the context of the team's goals.

After the meeting, a few managers compliment Emily on her attention to the team members and the team's goals. One manager also comments that Emily never looked at her phone during the meeting. Emily replied that she needed to give them her undivided attention. When she confirmed the team's goals and how they would achieve them with her product, she gave everyone clarity about the scope of the project's goals.

Scope: Are We Done Yet? excerpt:

Scope focuses your effort to get the most out of the time, energy and attention you devote to a solution. It specifies completion of a solution stage, so you know when you're done. When you discover customer needs, other requests can emerge that are out of scope. For example, the sales executive in the story asks you for a dashboard to go with the report. He doesn't want to wait for the dashboard to get the data from the report. That puts the dashboard out of scope and into the next version of this solution. After the sales executive accepts the report, you would ask what he expects from the dashboard and put those needs into the next version scope.

Coverage: How Much is Enough? excerpt:

Ideally, you want to discover all of the user needs within the solution scope. Stakeholders rarely have enough time, energy and attention to reach that goal. They rarely think of everything they need from a new solution. If your solution replaces an existing solution, the stakeholders may not recall everything that your replacement solution should cover. Upcoming posts in this blog will show you how to get closer to ideal coverage.

Defying Solution Gravity excerpt:

Defying Solution Gravity begins with preparation. You want to get as much information about the customer needs before your first discovery meeting with the stakeholders. Read any document the customer has pertaining to their needs or the context of those needs. For example, they may have documentation or reports from the system your solution will replace. The discovery meeting should focus on what only the stakeholders know about the customer needs. This makes the best use of their time, energy and attention.

Your Third Deliverable: Respect excerpt:

Respect stakeholders' time, energy and attention spent on discovery.

Recognize Value with Appreciation excerpt:

Katherine asked if any of these problems were insurmountable. Emily said no, but resolving them would take more time than their prospect would like. Katherine said, "This pilot has taken a lot more time than I expected. Thank you so much for the energy and attention you've put into it, Emily. I know it hasn't been easy," she said.

Develop Trust While Developing a Solution excerpt:

Emily felt overwhelmed. She made a habit of paying attention to people and their needs, but had not received such positive attention until now. She said, "Thank you so much. I loved working with everyone here and learned a lot. I realize that it took longer than expected to deliver the prototype, and appreciate you taking the extra time to make sure that we had a successful outcome." The team stands up and applauds. Emily earned the respect of the team, starting with her curiosity and attentiveness.

Empathy for the Customer excerpt:

Lessons Learned

The product manager disrespected the customer’s time and attention by leading with features and having an initial reluctance to learn what she needed from a diagramming tool. He didn’t ask the purposeful architect what she needed until she prompted him. Then he squandered more of her time trying to fit her needs into his template. He missed opportunities to follow up with her about what she needed, while making the template and company policy seem more important than her. She tried to help him by suggesting he record the conversation. He should have offered some means to capture her needs without wasting her time.

Developing Firm Skills excerpt:

There Must Be a Better Way

A team member whispers to the manager how Purposeful Architects seems too good to be true. The manager acknowledges the comment and turns to the representative. She asks the representative about tracking sophisticated metrics, such as a donor’s capacity and inclination to increase donations. The representative asks how they would get the data for the metrics while clarifying the terms. The manager answers her questions as much as she can. The representative offers some approaches while stressing the need to fill gaps in understanding. The team expresses their appreciation for Purposeful Architects’ preparation, attention, and demonstration of what they offer.

Showing Customer Concepts excerpt:

Relating the Customer Terms

Once a purposeful architect has compiled a glossary of customer terms in discovery, how can s/he show his or her understanding of the terms? Reviewing the glossary term by term will turn a discovery meeting into an executive snoozefest, losing the attention of most stakeholders. Besides, there’s more to customer terms than their definitions.