

Lyons Electronic Office: The First Business Intelligence Project - aficionado
http://timoelliott.com/blog/2014/05/in-the-beginning-was-analytics.html

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noir_lord
> The LEO team had designed the system that they would have like to have had
> if they had been running the teashops, not one that the managers themselves
> had asked for.

This has been the story of my life as a programmer, 61 years later and we are
still doing that.

I'm not saying that we should always build exactly what the client asks for
(they are often not aware of what is possible which is after all partly your
job to explain) but in many cases I've seen projects fail because the person
designing the over all system didn't go spend a few days with the people who
would be using it (and I don't mean meetings with them, I mean go and sit in
their office and watch them actually work).

I've found meetings are a horrible place to gather requirements from users
(especially if the user has a manager present) as you never get the full
unedited story and this leads to false assumptions.

Also something I find works well, get copies of all their _actual filled in_
paperwork (anonymised if required) as you'll often find the process the
manager describes and the process actually used diverge somewhat ("oh yeah, we
don't bother with that, we just write the drivers name on the manifest").

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aficionado
fully agree! seen and still see it every day!

