Carp Data Blog

Original article publish on EzineArticles.com on 10/23/2007, http://ezinearticles.com/?id=793260

Whether your career lies in the I.T. department, or on the business side; we’ve all seen the scenario play out. Salesman A gets asked a question by a potential customer, “can your software do this?”

“I’ll have to check and get back with you,” replies the dutiful salesman. Later that day, Salesman A goes through the software documentation to realize he already knows the answer to his question. No, the software can’t do this. But if it could, the customer would buy the product. The salesman knows he is supposed to bring new product ideas to the company Product Analyst… at the next monthly product meeting. With some luck, the new idea can get added on “The List” of future enhancements. Getting on The List of shuffling priorities, pencil whipped ROIs, and silly nice-to-haves is a major accomplishment of corporate politics itself. But the smart salesman knows his chances are doomed to make the sale.

Developer B walks by the office of our salesman. The developer has just filled up his water bottle of God-knows-how-many-years. “Don’t look at that nasty water bottle,” thinks the salesman to himself. “Hey,” he yells into the hallway, “I have a quick question.”

“Man, I know better than to walk through Sales,” Developer B thinks to himself. And then out loud, “Hey sure, what is it.”

The sales pitch begins by Salesman A, “we have this customer…” And the developer actually hears, “yada, yada, yada, revenue, revenue, revenue.” Until the end, he hears the meat of the tech question, “can the software do this.”

Everyone knows the software can’t do this, but the developer assumes the question really is, “can you make the software do this?” Now comes the three possible answers as heard by the salesman.

1. “Yes, no problem, yada, yada, yada, in 5 minutes.”
2. “Yes, … (long pause) … no problem, yada, yada, yada, it may take a while.”
3. “Yes, but… (even longer pause) … yada, yada, yada, it may change things.”

“Oh, cool,” replies the salesman, “that will be great news for our customer.” The boiled down answer to the customer, you guessed it, a single plain, “Yes, we can do that.”

The Homer Simpson “Doh” rings in the developer’s head. “What have I done, now I’ll have to create this,” the developer mentally adds these items to his to-do list.

So, what’s wrong with this picture? There is that nasty water bottle! Bypassing company product enhancement procedures is a breakdown of policy. And finally, subverting the software development life cycle (SDLC if you insist on industry acronyms) is another breakdown of policy. So, why did Developer B say yes?

Developers, programmers, software engineers, or just plain propeller-heads are a curious bunch, to say the least. The Yes answer is purely a response to the challenge of creating something new. We all have aspects of our jobs that require creativity, but a developer’s number one job is to creatively write code, to create a set of step-by-step instructions for our computers to follow.

The funny thing about computer code is there are often dozens of ways to accomplish the same results. Sometimes more. Each and every day, a developer’s job to create code is a puzzle of choosing the simplest and fastest set of instructions. Computer code can be a work of art, or a mess of spaghetti. It’s their world, just let them have it.

Asking a developer directly for a product enhancement can truly spark the creative juices. Any change in code comes with the consequences of affecting (read crash-and-burn) another set of code within the application. Sometimes, the challenge is just being able to make a seemingly smallest change without affecting anything else. It’s the Jenga game of pulling out the single wood block without making the whole tower fall.

Responding Yes to this challenge does not regard business policies, return on investments, or even sometimes common sense. It’s just a literal answer to the perceived question, “can you make the software do this.” Any self-respecting computer geek can almost never answer the question, “No.”

Is it ok to let them answer Yes? [Project Managers and Product Analysts cover your ears.] Yes, of course it is! Creativity is never a bad thing. It’s the driving force behind innovation. Great ideas should never be held up in once-a-month committees of the paper-pushers. Remember the laws of relative motion? Even if you are standing still, and everyone else is moving forward; you are moving backwards from everyone else. And that’s not good for business.

When the answer is, “Yes, no problem,” let that five minute, or five hour change occur. If the answer is, “Yes, but…” Stop, read the worried look on the developer’s face, and interpret as “No.” Then proceed with company policy and send the request to the product committee.