For your last project ask yourself: What did the stakeholders learn

At the start of a new project we like to begin with a naive mind, a beginner’s mind. In it we try to avoid our assumptions and start with a blank slate. Our clients do not. They are expert in their respective domain and know a lot. It’s naturally that during the project we learn lot about them and their domain, their work and their daily struggles. We see how they work around the limitations of their tools and cope with software written more than 30 years ago.
But besides us learning something about the domain, the stakeholders learn something about their domain, too. Because to develop the domain, the use cases and the daily work, we have to know details and reasons. Why is this step before that? Is it optional? Are these all the formats which are allowed? How long is the text usually? Why is there an exception to the rule? How often does it happen?
Usually we ask questions which cover the most traveled path, the happy trail. But in order to understand we need to get to the edges as well. The dark edges. Sometimes the number of objects we deal with is so big, nobody has all the answers. Our work, even before we write the software, enables collaboration. People and different departments have to work together. We work with all of them. Our software helps them to reach their common goals. But before that we need to know. And in order to tell us that the stakeholders need to dig deeper in their respective domain. Sometimes we need to look at the history in their domain, their work history, the decisions other stakeholders made in the past. It’s like archeology without the shovels, well, most of the time :).
Luckily the people we work with enjoy getting to know more about their work. They are astonished what depth the details have. How much different types of things, where gaps are. It is not always easy to light up areas that were kept in the dark so long. That were done just the way they were done. No we come and ask sometimes uneasy questions. We need to know. We need to know exactly. We need to know deeply.
This curiosity is not for its own sake. Our clients can confirm that the new software is so much better than the old. Not technical, but most importantly more adapted to their daily work.

That’s what’s important.