An excerpt from a dialog with a software engineer during a Moose demo:
Me: What do you want to see?
Him: The structure of my system.
Me: In terms of what? Class hierarchies?
Him: Yes.
Me: Here it is.
Him: Nice. And what does it tell me?
If you do not ask the right question it is improbably to get a satisfying answer.
Comments
But you can also predict or advice on what he wants to see. The client usually doesn’t have a clear understanding of what he wants. This case included.
Excellent! This is so true! I’ve seen this more than once.
Adrian, you can indeed try to predict. But, the main problem is in the expectation. The client needs to be aware the relation between the quality of the question and the usefulness of the answer.
Of course, the provider should help the client find his way, but ultimately, it is the client’s interest to learn to articulate what he wants because in the end he is the only one that knows it.