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December 02, 2005
Coping with Highly Technical Domain Experts
Our company's primary domain expert in one of our key areas spent 15 years owning a consultant/coding business. And it shows. For the longest time, I (as the architect) have struggled with him. Instead of describing the things he needed the product to do, he would describe how the product should be written.
It drove me up a wall, and it drove him up a wall too. Luckily, today, we finally had a breakthrough. He presented a chart, describing how the system should work, and how it should be designed. Instead of getting frustrated and angry, I took my boss's advice, and I started asking him "Why is this valuable?"
The results were extremely positive. We were able to shift the focus from his design approach to a "We need to build this because the customer will be able to do X". I then promptly wrote down that "the customer needs to do X".
I now have a list of things that the customer needs, and I didn't get into a heated, frustrating argument with the product guy. From my side, I'm quite happy.
I submit this in case it can be useful to someone else.
Posted by jb at December 2, 2005 07:44 PM
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