The Cliché: “our Customers Are the Most important Thing” This cliché has that important veneer of truth. Certainly, few companies can continue in business if their customers desert them, and in the business of software delivering usable knowledge to a customer is the ultimate goal. There is ample evidence that software developers do not routinely think from the customer’s perspective. But simply exhorting people to think of something important is hardly an industrial-strength business practice. Perhaps software organizations should consider building truly customer-centric development capabilities? Of course, that would be more difficult to do than just firing off a cliché.
You need me (the cliché-er) to remind you (the cliché-ee) that we do, in fact, have customers, because left to your own devices, you software engineers would only develop what you want to: specifically the easy stuff or the “cool” stuff. Besides, software developers really think they are the most important thing.
˲ There are many “customers” for a system. While the paying customers are undoubtedly the “most important,” the people who test, install, support, or maintain the system are also customers.
˲ The value in a system is the extent to which it makes knowledge accessible and usable. The extensibility of this knowledge—how we can build on it to service future customers—is also very important. In fact, this aspect of building systems is driving the entirely appropriate focus on systems architecture and scalability we see in modern development. Few end-user customers are sophisticated enough to specifically request such features as scalability, but it is important nonetheless.
We could even argue that building the capability of an organization is more important than any particular customer, since it leads to the ability of the company to satisfy many more customers in the future.
erate a skeptical and cynical response in its listeners than this one. There are many companies, executives, and managers who do truly believe in the people who work for them and, as far as they can, do look out for the interests of their employees. But we have probably all experienced the inflated rhetoric that sometimes passes for statements of worth and concern from executives. Its cliché-ness is not so much in the statement as in the sometimes transparent attempt at control it communicates. Most of us are quite sensitive to being manipulated like this, especially if it is done in a way that is so obvious that it also insults our intelligence.
You (the cliché-ees) unforgivably suspect us (the cliché-ers) of wanting to manipulate you into something against your best interests. We are hurt by this lack of trust. Therefore we hope that by assuring you of our true concern for your well-being, our genuine respect for you as individuals, and our earnest desire to not have you think that we are trying to manipulate you, you will become easier to manipulate.
˲ If people really are the most important resource, does the company actually provide them with what they need to do the job?
˲ In the business of software, people are not the most important resource, they are the only resource. Software de-
velopment is a knowledge acquisition activity and the only thing that can acquire knowledge is a person. Optimizing this resource requires dealing with people honestly.
As clear as this is, sometimes it needs to be restated. A company I once worked with adopted a set of “Rules of Engagement” intended to govern the behavior of all employees. Heading the list was “the customer is the most important thing.” One visionary company executive turned this around. He restated the imperatives as:
1. The most important thing is to build our employees’ capability.
2. The second most important thing is to build our capability to repeatedly do imperative 1.
3. The next most important thing is to deliver value to the customer.
I remember the alarm this caused, since it reversed the published order of the Rules of Engagement, but the executive was correct.
The company executive reasoned that unless you have good people working well, you simply cannot provide value to the customer. Unless you can repeatedly build and maintain your peoples’ capability, you may provide value to the customer once, but won’t be able to repeat it. And if you cannot repeat your success, you will fail your customer anyway.
This executive knew you won’t work smarter or do it right even the second or third time unless the people working in development have what they need. And you cannot act as if quality is the most important thing or the customer is the most important thing unless you first act as if your people are the most important thing. In articulating and enacting this visionary paradigm shift in their core competencies, this executive was walking the walk, going the extra mile, giving it 110%, and thinking outside of the box.
But in this case it wasn’t a cliché and that made all the difference.
Phillip G. Armour ( armour@corvusintl.com) is a senior consultant at Corvus International Inc,. Deer Park, IL.
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