Customer Needs

Definition

What a customer needs from a solution, independent of the solution's implementation. Typically known as requirements.

Purpose

Complete and accurate understanding of customer needs define the discovery journey, making sure the solution will fulfill the needs.

Key Point

Focus on customer needs throughout the discovery journey, defying Solution Gravity to thoroughly understand the needs.

Customer Needs in Purposeful Architect

Scope: Are We Done Yet?

Excerpt: Scope acts like a container of customer needs. When the container is full, it has all of the needs to complete the solution.

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: Software solutions often fail when they do not cover enough user needs. The Project Management's Institute Pulse of the Profession® (2017) found that 39% of surveyed organizations reported inaccurate requirements gathering as a primary cause for project failure. They did not accurately cover customer needs within the project scope.

Excerpt: Salesforce requires Apex developers build unit tests that cover at least 75% of their Apex code in a release. The release must pass all of those tests before the code can go into production. What percentage of customer needs should a Business Analyst or Architect discover to design a solution?

Excerpt: Discover as many customer needs as possible and decide which ones will cover your solution scope.

Improve Discovery While Adapting to a Pandemic

Excerpt: You’re planning a discovery workshop where you will meet with stakeholders. You want to decide on the solution scope and make sure you cover all the customer needs within the scope. You reviewed customer documents pertaining to your company's proposed solution. You look forward to stakeholders answering your questions. You prepared an agenda outlining the workshop's scope, objectives and outcomes. Stakeholders will arrive from around the country for the workshop. You're excited to get everyone in the same place to align on what the customer needs. You want to cover all the needs in the workshop, so the customer receives the solution they expect, and more.

Excerpt: The coronavirus pandemic hits, causing businesses to cancel non-essential travel, including your stakeholders' trips. What do you do now? You have anticipated this workshop for months! As you come up with ideas to salvage the situation, you shift perspective. Instead of regretting a cancelled on-site meeting, you anticipate opportunities to improve the workshop. As a purposeful architect, you adjust to changes in plans as well as you adjust to inevitable changes in customer needs and solution design.

Defying Solution Gravity

Excerpt: Discovering customer needs is like searching for the gemstones around the mountain. Solution Gravity will pull at you and the other stakeholders anxious to get the solution. If you have not yet discovered all of the customer needs, you will end up with an incomplete solution and a disappointed customer. The previous article, The Force That Leaves a Solution Unfinished illustrates how Solution Gravity pulls stakeholders towards an incomplete solution.

Excerpt: Defy Solution Gravity that pulls you into solution design before discovering all of the customer needs that your solution would fulfill.

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.

Excerpt: You should set goals for the customer discovery meeting, starting with determining scope. Scope specifies what customer needs the solution will fulfill, and only those needs. If you have questions about the documents you read to prepare for the meeting, set a goal to get answers to those questions, within the scope. The meeting should result in a document summarizing the customer needs in the scope, with supporting details.

Excerpt: Once stakeholders recognize that you have captured their pain points, Solution Gravity becomes stronger. The stakeholders want relief from their pain as soon as possible. You must continue to defy Solution Gravity to capture all other customer needs in the scope. if the pain points hurt enough, the stakeholders may decide to limit the scope to only relieving the pain points. That risks ending up with an incomplete design, needing additional discovery and design rework. Ideally, the scope will include pain point relief and needs for improvements, making the solution more complete.

Your First Deliverable: Curiosity

Excerpt: Develop curiosity about what a customer needs from your solution and encourage stakeholders to have the same curiosity about customer needs.

Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E.

Excerpt: The success of the client's Salesforce implementation hinges on capturing their business needs thoroughly and clearly. You acknowledge the needs as you capture them as the first level of confirmation that you have their needs. You review all that you've captured to develop understanding and insight into what the client needs from Salesforce. You create documents reflecting what you've learned and use them to show your understanding as a second level of confirmation. You edit the documents based on feedback from the client that varies from your initial understanding. You're discovering customer needs with C.A.U.S.E.: capture, acknowledge, understand, show, edit.

Gathering Intelligence for Discovery

Excerpt: Learn as much as you can about customer needs, outcomes and processes before leading any discovery session.

Surpass Customer Expectations with Opportunities

Excerpt: When discovering what a customer needs from a solution, ideas often emerge for a perfect solution. These ideas fall out of scope of the current discovery. The pressure to deliver a solution within the current scope makes it tempting to dismiss these ideas. There won’t be enough time to develop these ideas. The case below shows how keeping a list of “perfect solution” ideas paid off.