A story of project failure

I've been delaying looking at a video for a long time, but tonight I took the time.
Go to Mitch Lacey's presentation at InfoQ and remember all your old projects going wrong.

It really highlights the importance of understanding the customer and making sure the customer understands you. If this fails it doesn't matter what process you use, be it agile and Scrum'y or heavy and RUP'ish.

It's in my collected experience that to often the customer is the biggest issue. Software engineers are good at building whatever they are told. But customers to often doesn't have a clue what they are asking for. To often it's the wrong people asking for something to be buildt!

It's our job as software engineers to see this. Send the customers to product owner training or whatever necessary. But make sure you are talking to the right people and ensure you understand each other. Don't just take their word for it whne they say that you are building the right thing. Have then to really feel the system you are building, early, and make then understand that this is what they are going to get. No magic is going to happen later.

A friend of mine is writing an interesting PhD on using ontologies as an early mean to communications in software projects. That could be an insteresting take on this issue. I'll post about it when it's done.