Ask Why First
You must have heard the old story about the fact that “it is always hard to find out WHAT the clients want”?
And also if you are a developer you must have faced the problem of not knowing HOW to implement a particular requirement.
A good approach that my friend Kelly came up with the other day was to ALWAYS ask WHY first.
Once we understand the client’s needs, it will be much easier to implement the feature in such a way that will add more value.
The other big issue of not knowing WHY is delivering or even estimating “not needed requirements”. For example, the other day we were estimating a Single Sign-On feature for an application that did not have any other app or even OS to share credentials… So, we asked: WHY do they need SSO? And then… Ding Dang Doon! (Thanks Dave Coombes and Ryan Moffat for the awesome onomatopoeia “Ding Dang Doon”)
Hi Fabio,
This is a great post that aligns well with the concept that Chris Matts talks about when he refers to Feature Injection. For many people who make use of User Stories, it’s also the next step into realising there’s a good reason for the format (and I agree that the best format is to put the why first).
I’d also recommend people put “What outcome” vs simply “What” since it’s very easy for people to confuse the “How” and “What” rather than talking about what objective they want to achieve.
You forgot the base of that pyramid… the fundamental question of WHO can I blame when it all goes wrong?
Another usefull trick is to ask 5 Whys to reach the root cause, like a kid ( I think I heard this from you and Renan )
Regards Sir