This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
"If you decide that software customization is required, you've got to realize that, the dilemma discussed in Laurent Bossavit's weblog post is very real. There are two types of programmers in this world; those that believe that customers don't know what they want and those that believe customers do know what they want. But even worse, depending on their mood and most recent experiences, the same programmer will switch from one view to the other...snip...My take on all of this is that it's your (the customer's) responsibility to know what you want."
One thing that seems to be implied in these discussions, but deserves explicit mention, is that, in projects, there is often too strong a distinction drawn between "customers" and "providers/performers/suppliers/etc." Yes, those are their roles regarding their relationship to the output -- the product -- of the project, but what is too often missed is that customers are also project team members -- resources/performers as responsible for a successful (or unsuccessful) outcome as are the technical "builders."
What this requires is an organizational understanding of the above assertion. What this requires are executives and managers that understand the necessity to effectively support/staff important projects (and any project worth doing should be considered important) with whomever is needed for their success.
Any project that does not intimately plan the use of "customers as resources" is doomed to the dilemma of not knowing whether customers know what they want.
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