Communicating with Your Customers Determining Their Needs

One of the more difficult aspects of providing a product to a customer is determining what the customer really needs. Frequently, the customer is not sure exactly what they need. They just have a problem and they are looking to you to provide the solution. The difficulty in determining product requirements is compounded by the fact that Test Design Automation (TDA) products need to be useful to a wide range of customers with diverse needs. That is the situation in which we found ourselves. TDA has the responsibility of supplying the IBM Corporation with its needed Test Generation and Fault Simulation capabilities. These products are software solutions designed to run on a wide range of general purpose system 370 computers under both VM and MVS operating systems. Our customer mix is a widely diverse set of product development groups; from the designers of the 3090 series in Poughkeepsie to a typewriter design group in Uxington, Kentucky. Not only is the product mix diverse, but also the geographic locations of the development groups. We serve product development labs worldwide. First, we had to be able to identify our "representative" customer. Once this was done we would need to open up more direct lines of communication with these customers. The method we used to improve upon these problems is the subject for this paper. It will cover the cross-section of the group which went about solving the problems; the methods chosen to attack the problems; implementation; and the mechanisms put into place to continue the work after the group's dissolution.