Technical Advise Week #7 - In Search of the Holy Grail (Details)

A constant cry from the world of technology is for details. Details, details, details. What people are really looking for is specific, explicit and exact answers. One would probably say, "is that asking too much"? Neither Max or I think so, but what we are most disturbed about is that isn't what they are really asking for. What they are asking for is for someone to do the work for them. We have even seen cases where they purposefully hide behind 'the details' as a way of saying we don't know exactly what we want, we haven't heard an answer that rings right enough for us to proceed, and ultimately we don't know what we want/need/or whether we have already got it. All too often this level of craziness is the direct result of excess complexity and trying to do too much at one time. We like to think of this as giving someone the cookbook and having them throw the choices back in our face and say that nothing that was prepared tastes good. Each and everyone has an obligation to do their part by first of all establishing what they wish to do, or what they need in order to proceed to the next step. Secondly, the authority (aka SME) is obligated to synchronize this understanding and to provide input, sometimes in a fashion that will foster further dialog, leading to a series of answers of mutual agreement. There are those occasions when 'we' never have seen eye-to-eye. Often it's not for a lack of interest on our part, but because a lack of skepticism on the part of the requester. One must reconcile or at least reach a point of neutrality before engaging in the pursuit. Otherwise wasteful energy is spent trying to convince rather than to solve. For us... we remain intense upon service but we can only do half the lifting (even with our little strong paws), the rest has to be up to the requester (and they have much bigger paws).