The dread of meeting with the client
The preparation
Day 2 started with an analysis seminar, where a Helmes analyst Kaisa gave us some tips on what to do when meeting with the client. Some notable advice was to keep it simple, produce a MVP and don't promise things you can't deliver.
After the seminar we had our analysis mentor helped us to create a questionnaire to maximize the time we had with the client. The questions used the following guidelines:
After the seminar we had our analysis mentor helped us to create a questionnaire to maximize the time we had with the client. The questions used the following guidelines:- WHO (who is the client?)
- WHY (why are we doing this?)
- WHEN (what are the timelimits?)
- HOW (platform?, existing code?, analysis process setup, communication?)
- WHAT (the actual business requirements and functionality of the system, what is the actual need of the client)
- PROBLEMS (what would be their priority: minimum viable problem)
Constructing the questions was no easy task as we had not worked with clients before so coming up with the business process questions was an unfamiliar activity.
As seen on the photo below everyone enjoyed themselves and the photographer didn't have a hard time at all!
Photoshoot
Before meeting the client we gave a photographer the wonderful opportunity to make some software developers smile.
The meeting
The meeting with the client started with everyone introducing themselves and their role in the project. With the introductions over we hunkered down with our questions and started trying to get the information we needed from the client. Our initial plan was to ask about the high level idea of how the current business process worked and what the problem with it was. Having asked the question we were barraged with information about what the problem is and how the new system should fix it. This may have been due to me asking the question we had previously written down more palatable. There's a lesson in this, make your questions clear and concise and perhaps take your clients background into account as the client was knowledgeable about the system and it's requirements. Thanks to a great scribe we managed to get a lot of information about the specification.
The second surprise came when about 1/3 of the way into the meeting I realized I had completely misunderstood the problem. You see, I thought we were to make a system that creates and saves contracts. This was due to my poor understanding of the project brief given to us earlier. Actually we were creating a system that added some metadata to the contracts to make them accessible. With a flustered face I kept calm and carried on.
After the meeting our mentor said the data we had gathered was good and the meeting went very well. We systematized our notes and headed home for the day.
After the meeting our mentor said the data we had gathered was good and the meeting went very well. We systematized our notes and headed home for the day.
