Imagine walking into a restaurant.

No, not that one. Imagine walking a nicer restaurant than the one you thought of at first. A lot nicer.

Imagine walking into a 3-star Michelin-rated best-in-the-world restaurant, the kind of place where you plan international travel around reservations, the kind of place where the chef’s name is whispered in a kind of hushed awe by other chefs around the world.

Now imagine being seated and then insisting that the chef cook a specific dish in a specific way, because that’s what you’re used to eating, because you know what you like and what you want.

In this situation, one of three things is likely to happen:

1. The chef will give you what you ask for, and your dining experience will be diminished because your request was granted.
2. The chef will ask you to leave.
3. The chef will instruct someone else to ask you to leave.^[1]

Let’s step back from the culinary context of this imaginary scenario, and put it into the context of software development and BI.

Imagine a user emailing a developer or software team^[2] and insisting that they need a feature developed that works in some specific way. “Just make it do this!” or maybe “It should be exactly like <legacy software feature> but <implemented in new software>!!”

I can’t really imagine the restaurant scene playing out – who would spend all that money on a meal just to get what they could get anywhere? But I don’t need to imagine the software scene playing out, because I’ve seen it day after day, month after month for decades, despite the fact that even trivial software customization can be more expensive than a world-class meal. I’ve also been on both sides of the conversation – and I probably will be again.

When you have a problem, you are the expert on the problem. You know it inside and out, because it’s your problem. You’ve probably tried to solve it – maybe you’ve tried multiple solutions before you asked for help. And while you were trying those ineffective solution approaches, you probably thought of what a “great” solution might look like.

So when you ask for help, you ask for the solution you thought of.

This is bad. Really bad.

“Give me this solution” or “give me this feature” is the worst thing to ask for. Because while you may be the expert on your problem, you’re not an expert on the solution. If you were, you wouldn’t be asking for help in the first place.

And to make matters worse, most of the people on the receiving end aren’t the IT equivalents of 3-star Michelin-rated chefs. They’re line cooks, and they give you what you asked for because they don’t know any better. And because the customer is always right, right?

Yeah, nah.

As a software professional, it’s your job to solve your customers’ problems, and to do so within constraints your customers probably know nothing about, and within an often-complex context your customers do not understand^[3]. If you simply deliver what the customer asks for, you’ve missed the point, and missed an opportunity to truly solve the fundamental problem that needs to be solved.

If you’re a BI professional, every project and every feature request brings with it an opportunity. It’s the opportunity to ask questions.

Why do you need this?

When will you use it?

What are you doing today without the thing you’re asking for?

When will this be useful?

Who else will use it?^[4]

As a software or BI professional, you’re the expert on the solution, just as your customer is the expert on the problem. You know where logic can be implemented, and the pros and cons of each option. You know where the right data will come from, and how it will need to be transformed. You know what’s a quick fix and what will require a lot of work – and might introduce undesirable side-effects or regressions in other parts of the solution.

With this expertise, you’re in the perfect position to ask the right questions to help you understand the problem that needs to be solved. You’re in the perfect position to take the answers to your questions and to turn them into what your customer really needs… which is often very different from what they’re asking for.

You don’t need to ask these questions every time. You may not even need to ask questions of your customers most of the time^[5]. But if you’re asking these questions of yourself each time you’re beginning new work – and asking questions of your customers as necessary – the solutions you deliver will be better for it.

And when you find yourself on the requesting side (for example, when you find yourself typing into ideas.powerbi.com) you’re in the perfect position to provide information about the problem you need solved – not just the solution you think you need. Why not give it a try?

This is a complex topic. I started writing this post almost 100 years ago, way back in February 2020^[6]. I have a lot more that I want to say, but instead of waiting another hundred years I’ll wrap up now and save more thoughts for another post or two.

If you’ve made it this far and you’re interested in more actual best practices, please read Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez. This book is very accessible, and although it is targeted more at startups and commercial software teams it contains guidance and practices that can be invaluable for anyone who needs to deliver solutions to someone else’s problems.

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^[1] This seems like the most likely outcome to me.

^[2] This could be a commercial software team or “the report guy” in your IT department. Imagine what works for you.

^[3] If you’re interested in a fun and accessible look at how the Power BI team decides what features to build, check out this 2019 presentation from Power BI PM Will Thompson. It’s only indirectly related to this post, but it’s a candid look at some of the “often-complex context” in which Power BI is developed.

^[4] Please don’t focus too much on these specific questions. They might be a good starting point, but they’re just what leaped to mind as I was typing, not a well-researched list of best practice questions or anything of the sort.

^[5] If you’re a BI developer maintaining a Power BI application for your organization, you may have already realized that asking a ton of questions all the time may not be appreciated by the people paying your salary, so please use your own best judgment here.

^[6] This probably explains why I so casually mentioned the idea of walking into a restaurant. I literally can’t remember the last time I was in a restaurant. Do restaurants actually exist? Did they ever?