Work comments: mining requirements

When I was in college, I worked with my teacher on projects, but none of them were completed by time (some projects didn't have a clear time ), each project is implemented at a certain stage (or it may be about to be handed over to the customer). The project will be presented to the customer and then comments from the customer (sometimes the previous requirements may even be pushed down ), once and for all, the customer will use the service (with some maintenance required), even if it fails, it will be completed.
When I host and develop a project in my company, I feel the pain of being confused. When you want to build a project, the customer will describe his needs to me, and then I will document, design, and wait for the development to a certain stage, so that the customer can check our progress, I would like to give another comment. This is a mess. After reading it, the customer can always put forward "new" demands. Let's change it again and let the customer look at it again, then we need a new one ...... I think this project is a bottomless and endless demand. Sometimes I really want to scold the customer: What's wrong with you? You can't say it at once. Are you playing with me?
Why are Users unable to fully describe their needs? Why do we demonstrate unfinished systems to customers again and again, as if they are recalling their needs? After reading this information, the customer often puts forward new requirements. There are usually the following two situations.
1. Customers often only describe the needs (functions) that he thinks are important or important to them. For those who take it for granted, "This is what it is ", the "yes" features are never mentioned, but they are often indispensable. I am not an expert in this field, but I do not know anything about what the customer takes for granted, when the system is formed, the customer does not see it. This is naturally a "new" requirement.
2. The customer can describe the demand at will and lacks rigor. This is because the process description is not well considered. When it is found that special circumstances cannot be met, this is a new requirement.

After summing up the above, I found that the requirement described by the customer is only part of the requirement acquisition (requirement analysis), and more techniques are used to mine user requirements, the more you mine your customer needs, the easier it will be to work on later. In practice, I have summarized the following methods:
1. Learn relevant knowledge to find implicit requirements such as "taken for granted" and "originally. Methods: Find books in related fields, read them, and find related systems (Google, Baidu, there must be a lot of them). Practice it yourself. After the above efforts, generally, you can find a lot of such requirements. Don't be afraid of troubles. Write down and talk with the customer.
Mining requirement 1: a problem occurs in quality control, that is, the number of purchases <applied quantity (the purchasing department can only purchase by quantity), which cannot meet the requirements of the applicant. How can this problem be solved? CUSTOMER: in this case, the next time, of course, the same supplier sends the quantity to be supplied to us along with the next supply. The customer thinks this is natural and his company has always been doing this, and it is a matter of course.
Mining requirement 2: In case of emergency, whether to wait for the next purchase to be sent together, or ask the supplier to make up immediately, the customer: this also applies, of course, we immediately asked the supplier to deliver the goods separately.
2. Repeat the process and ask yourself a few more questions to see if you can justify yourself. When talking about the business process, the customer generally only talks about the main process, and the branch stream is not mentioned. pay more attention to this part.
Mining requirement 3: there may be some quality problems when purchasing the arrived items. To meet the quantity requested, it is more appropriate to purchase the items. Customer: Yes.
Mining requirements 4: Where is the basis for multiple purchases? Customer: Collects the qualification rate of the suppliers.
3. communicate with customers more often. If there are many customers, they can communicate with each other one by one to form documents, confirm the documents one by one, and explain the entire process. If the customer has any problems, they can communicate with each other, form a document, confirm it, and explain it again, so repeatedly until the demand is clear. Generally, the problem can be solved after three times. This method is easy to say and requires patience in actual operations, I have suffered hardships and are not afraid of troubles. Don't rush to start coding (I made a lot of mistakes). If you don't have a clear requirement, coding is a negative task. The more code you make, the more painful it will be. (This is what I did in my previous project, bitter ).

Think that the flow chart obtained after mining needs is much more than what the customer originally said. If we don't do this work, we just do the system according to what the customer says, add these requirements one by one in the middle. Should we scold the customer again? (Note: This process is just for example. There are also a lot of less rigorous points that cannot justify themselves. You don't have to be too truthful. You just need to know what I want to say ).
I have used this idea to sort out the needs of the last two projects. 100% of them cannot fully grasp the customer's needs, it is okay to grasp more than 85% of the customer's needs (and also to check whether the demand analysis time is sufficient). I spent more than half a month to sort out the demand for one project, at that time, the customer was satisfied when they saw it. After the development was completed (it took one and a half months), they presented the demonstration to the customer, and the large functional customers were basically satisfied, however, the customer still added five small functions (perspiration), but they did not break the bones and muscles. They all had some small functions. It took about a week to add them and they could be delivered, think about the previous hard work. After struggling to cope with changing needs for a long time, I finally reached a point and shared it with everyone.