Asking the Right Questions as Software Professionals
published on 9/23/2008 6:34:46 PM


As, software professionals we always try to ask the right questions to find more about our client and the software we are trying to build. We also try to use the same approach in our non-technical life. Few months ago I went to the car dealership with my wife to buy her a new car. I had done all my homework about the car like MSRP and the drive out price etc. My wife and I both were asking questions to the dealer about the car. My very beautiful and intelligent wife’s questions were something like this:

Do you think this is the right car for us?
Do you think this car will save us gas money?
Do you think this car is good?

As, you might have guessed the answer to all the questions was “YES”. As, software professionals we like to ask questions differently. We want to ask the smallest possible question and get the detailed answer. My questions were as follows:

What is the resale value of this car?
What is the APR you are giving for the purchase?
What is the price difference between the automatic transmission and manual?

As you can see that my questions revealed useful information about the car. You might argue that I should know the answer to all these questions before going to the store and you are right and yes I did know the answer except the APR question.

The application requirement digging phase is responsible for coming up with these questions. Some of the first questions that you ask the client are:

1)    Why do you need this software to be built?
2)    What are you looking to solve with this software?
3)    Who are the people using this software?

Of course this is just the start of questions and the complete list can be quite lengthy. Once, we get the overview of the application we can dig a little deeper to ask for the application roles etc.

Oh in case you are wondering we did end up buying the car, Honda Accord 2008.