Coming to Terms
Understanding Customer Requirements
The Path to Understanding
Business analysts and architects learn a new vocabulary on a discovery journey - the customer’s terminology within the scope of a solution. All stakeholders on the journey need a common set of terms to understand each other. Agreeing to these common terms streamlines discovery of what the customer needs from a solution.
Discovery with a C.A.U.S.E. introduces five aspects of the discovery journey - capture and acknowledge customer needs, understand their needs, show this understanding to customer stakeholders and edit understanding based on customer feedback. A business analyst should capture customer terminology along with their needs during discovery. The graphic below shows how C.A.U.S.E. applies to discovering the customer’s terminology.
One stakeholder, typically in a business analyst role, should own the glossary and make it available to all stakeholders. The glossary owner updates the glossary to reflect changes initiated by and agreed upon by stakeholders. The glossary serves as a reference when stakeholders need clarification or have conflicting interpretations of a term.
Example Glossary of Terms
Here is a sample glossary of Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) terms:
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Account | An organization or individual of interest |
| Contact | A person employed by an Account (as employee or contractor) |
| Contract | An agreement defining business terms between parties |
| Opportunity | A deal in progress with an Account |
| Order | A request for a transaction |
| Quote | A list of proposed goods or services to sell, with prices |
Each customer defines terms for their business. For example, a financial services firm could define “Account” as a repository for financial assets. They could define a person doing business with their firm as a “Client.”
An Opportunity for Misunderstanding
Suppose an organization implements Salesforce CRM without knowing the terms shown above. One stakeholder interprets Opportunity as a proposal and confuses it with Quote. Another stakeholder thinks of Opportunity as a potential order, not realizing Order has its own definition. The two stakeholders work at cross-purposes when discussing opportunities. Distinguishing Quotes and Orders from Opportunities clarifies their conversation.
Discovering a Customer’s Terms
Most customer terms emerge during discovery. Ideally, the business analyst can uncover these terms before the first discovery meeting from the customer’s documents and reports. The most important terms to capture are nouns: people, places and things the business manages within the solution scope. For example, a non-profit organization could deal with donors, donations and event venues.
When a customer stakeholder introduces a term open to interpretation, the glossary owner should ask the stakeholder what s/he means by the term. For example, a stakeholder introduces the term “staff” after previously referring to “employees.” What distinguishes ‘staff” from “employees”? It could turn out that “staff” includes employees and contractors.
The glossary defines terms only to clarify communication between stakeholders. The glossary is not a data dictionary. It could serve as a reference for a data dictionary later, during design. A good glossary owner defies solution gravity, the temptation to implement a solution during discovery. S/he focuses on all stakeholders agreeing on the meaning of terms.
Clearing the Path to Success
A customer terminology glossary helps the development team understand what the customer means through discovery. If customer stakeholders have different interpretations of a term, they should reconcile those differences before using the term in discovery. The glossary owner will capture and acknowledge the reconciled definition in the glossary, providing a common understanding of the term. The glossary lays the groundwork for clear communication and understanding of customer needs.
A glossary of customer terms puts solution development on a trajectory to success.