The idea of listening to your customer is one that should never be dismissed. But surprisingly, I often see it happening by other contractors. I refuse to buy the argument that customers aren’t equipped with the ability to know what they want. Some may need assistance with technical jargon, but a web application is not always just a web application.

Perhaps you’ve worked with this guy I know. He holds the record for World’s Fastest Programmer. Nothing is new to him. He’s seen it all. In fact, he doesn’t even have time to discuss it. He has code to write! Well obviously, a great coder alone is not a competent software engineer.  Coding is just one of the many areas in which we must excel in order to complete the job. Truly useful systems must be well-designed. High-quality systems must be thoroughly tested. Easily maintainable systems must be well-documented.

Quick joke: What do you call someone who hangs around musicians? Give up? Drummer.

A recent post by Adam got me reflecting on my own "previous life." Before I became the responsible adult that I am today, I used to get paid for playing drums in nightclubs. I worked with several guitar players who were technically brilliant, yet they were horrible musicians. These guys spent all their days learning to play faster and faster and faster...yet they inevitably fell apart in a group setting at night.

I played all kinds of music too, whatever the need. If I wasn’t the single greatest technician to ever have graced the stage, I could at least take pride in being extremely adaptable and…here is they key for all you kids out there…being a darn good listener. Doing so afforded me a lot of work. Larry King (not a fan, love the quote) said he discovered early in his career that, “I never learned anything when I was talking.” So even if was sitting in on stage with folks I’d never met, it was always easy for me to find "my place" in the music and make things sound good.

Listening to our customers requires a similar set of skills - flexibility, creativity, open-mindedness. That’s not to say that contracts and statements of work should not dictate the work that we do; they most certainly should. However, requirements can and do change as we go through the software life cycle. New management may come on to a project, and new technologies continue to be introduced. Business processes evolve. Change is constant.

Customers may truly not know what they want or need, and this is completely reasonable. Homicide detectives, for example, are neither software engineers nor graphic designers. Our job is to create the tools that they need to do their job; to identify, locate, and arrest violent criminals. We the consultants are the highly paid technical experts, yet it is our responsibility to fully grasp the needs of our client’s business. Only then can we help elicit quality requirements and build a system that meets their needs.