Minor rant from James – what happened to the customer

I just posted this on another site, so I didn’t want to repeat it all here.

The article is at this simple english heading:

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=2221192&discussionID=13508554&sik=1265408037120&trk=ug_qa_q&goback=.ana_2221192_1265408037120_3_1

As you would (not) guess from the wording of the link, I am wondering why we still debate the involvement of the customer in our IT projects.

We adopt every new technical practice and every new approach – and then baulk at the idea that we need to understand our customer’s needs, or at the idea that we need to get them to make the time to help us.

Maybe we should stop implementing other project methodologies and start breaking our project approaches into two simple groupsings:

– Method 1 – ask people what they want, give it to them and then ask them what they want next.

– Method 2 – build something, apologise and then tell the client they are stuck with whatever it is, so why not give us more money and see what happens.