Thanks to Jeff Nall for contributing to this post.

How many times have you delivered to spec and hit your milestone only to get the “That’s not what I asked for.” feedback? Guess what, your customers don’t always know what they want much less what they really need. They might think they do, but if that were the case they would have been able to staff the project internally or with some new direct hires.

I once worked on a project where the company actually hired a consultant to translate corporate jargon into generic tech and software development terms. Apparently, they were struggling to find new hires or consultants with the skills they were looking for. Additionally, the resources they would gamble on were so lost trying to understand requirements, the development departments turned into revolving doors. The “Demystification Consultant” had a full time job translating specs and RFP’s so vendors could understand what to bid on. It might have been cheaper to adopt language learning methodologies and switch to a common communication device, illustrations.

In Agile that translates to frequent demonstrations of development progress. Rather than placing the entire project’s success on a nearly finalized demonstration of a product 2 weeks from delivery, Agile iterative development practices frequent illustrations of what the product will be so stake holders can approve or make changes with enough lead time to actually see the modifications implemented.

How does a consultant benefit from this process? Well like it or not, no matter what the contract says, an unhappy customer can remove a consultant and withhold payment if the customer believes they can argue in court that the contract was violated. Consultants are burdened with not just delivering what was promised on the agreed schedule, but also executing the contract in such a way that the customer wants to work with them again or act as a reference for other potential clients. Conducting frequent demonstrations: illustrates your responsiveness to your customers’ needs, reaffirms progress made on the deliverables  and keeps the lines of communication open for timely reactions to change. Agile is the best defense against “That’s not what I asked for” in the final days of your project.

The customer isn’t always right–they’re hiring you to answer the question for them. It’s your job to read between the lines of what the customer says they want and give them what they need. The point is the answers you get from someone who isn’t an expert in YOUR field can’t logically be the solution to the problem. You’re dealing with breadcrumbs, not road maps.