The Force That Leaves a Solution Unfinished
You're leading the final discovery meeting with a user manager and an executive sponsor. They eagerly anticipate the release of your solution. You have a vague, uneasy feeling and want to find out where it's coming from. You review the business needs with the user manager and ask her how much the scope covers those needs. She ponders the question and replies, "I think we have it covered." You recommend going through the user workflow one more time. "Again?" the sponsor asks. "It looks good enough to me." The user manager agrees - they want the solution as soon as possible!
Your company designs and develops the solution and submits it for user acceptance testing. A user tries out the solution and gets excited about what she sees. The user manager loves the faster, higher quality workflow.
Then the user asks, "How do I search?" Your heart sinks. The user manager's face looks stormy. Your discovery of customer needs missed their requirement for search in your solution.
Everyone in this story felt a strong force to deliver the solution, even though it did not cover the business needs within its scope. I call this force Solution Gravity. Like physical gravity, it applies to everyone. The executive sponsor wanted the solution as soon as possible, the user manager needed the solution's benefits and you were eager to please both of them.
Solution Gravity pulls stakeholders and the development team towards building a solution. If the solution scope does not have all of the customer needs, the incomplete solution will disappoint the customer.
Several forces contribute to Solution Gravity:
- A deadline. The customer needs the solution by a specific date
- Incentives, such as payment to a contractor for completing discovery of customer needs.
- Available talent. The architect or development team become unavailable after a specific date. They need time before then to design and develop the solution.
You need to defy Solution Gravity while discovering customer needs, and continue to defy it until you have enough customer needs to cover the solution scope. The next post introduces defiance of Solution Gravity.
When have you felt the force of Solution Gravity? How did you cope with it? Please share your story in the comments below. We also welcome your questions, suggestions and challenges in the comments.