The People Want This - Warning: Tech Content

In my job I am partially responsible for vetting new projects, consulting on ROI and generally helping with the tech aspects of a new project. I gain an understanding of the business logic with all the stakeholders, then report what it will take in terms of programming, design, and maintenance to make it happen. There are endless meetings where we brainstorm new ideas, or look for ways to implement a new feature. There are other meetings where we look to the past and review what ideas are working and which ones are not. These are all common tasks for a project manager.

What has been bothering me lately however is the blind thrust of certain stakeholders to develop and deploy projects without the first clue as to actual user demand, or more importantly the Return on Investment. I hear it frequently, "a lot of people are looking for (fill in the blank)". Really? Are you sure? If my team and I move forward on this (fill in the blank) project we will be committing hours, time away from other projects, fees, payments and ongoing maintenance that we will have to budget for. Did you really do any research on this or are you simply stabbing in the dark on this one.

Here is an example, I recently had on of my freelance clients complain about the way his photo gallery worked. It is a simple affair on an inexpensive website. Just click on an image and the image will pop up and display the larger version for better viewing. I did not code new pages for each individual image, just a few simple lines of JavaScript that will display the image in a window. Since there was not an actual html page to edit, there was no way to show text or provide a "close window" button. He was unhappy about the lack of a "close window" link and stated in very blunt terms: "..there are many people that wont know to click the 'x' to close the window.." Wow, in today's world if someone is looking at his website and doesn't know to click the 'x' then we all have problems.

He had no empirical evidence, no statistics, no clue whatsoever if his statement was actually true, only that he himself felt that clicking the 'x' was too arcane an operation for most computer users to comprehend. Thus, I had to spend another hour coming up with a solution that both satisfied his odd demand and didn't break my time budget. This happens all the time in meetings at my real job too. I hear one old salt, who is a bit backwards when it comes to tech, always bleating about some odd item "people want". How does he know what people want? He deals in a fairly narrow level of expertise and to forever hear that the "people want this" just drives me up a wall. So assume for a moment he is correct, that means 200 people want it? 1000 people want it? Show me the evidence, the demographics, proof from others that do have the feature.

Second guessing what your audience wants in a web application is not a good way to conduct business. Sure, one reason I have a job is to satisfy the whims of management, but in today's economy when we are all doing more with less, I want to see some hard data before I make my team start on a project that will have minimal returns. Take the time to actually learn what "the people want" then track those metrics and confirm the hours spent were worth the effort.