One of the biggest complaints I hear over and over again about talking to stakeholders as part of a requirements gathering exercise is:
“They’re just lazy! They won’t just tell us what they want!”
Which is…
ridiculous.
Now, if it’s around lunchtime, and your belly is grumbling and the smell wafting through the open window is of sizzling, searing meat cooked on an open grill…
you might know exactly what you want.
If you’re a hard-core carnivore like myself, you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Damn! That smells great! I’d love a big, juicy burger right now!”
So, yeah, there are times when you do know what you want.
And so do your stakeholders. They know exactly what they want, at least to some degree. And this isn’t that hard to understand. In most cases, what they care about are bigger-picture items and objectives they’re trying to reach to deliver their part of the overall business strategy.
They know they want to be successful.
They know they want to add value to the organization.
Or they know that they need to sell 10,000,000 widgets this quarter to meet their targets.
But if you want to know what they want…from YOU?
They’re not going to have the foggiest notion of what that is. They don’t do your job. They want to keep the data safe, stay out of the newspapers, and not have to have you tell them “No” for the 7 millionth time.
Beyond that…
crickets.
And that’s actually ok. They’re not supposed to.
But it doesn’t mean you still don’t have to understand their world enough to figure out how you can help. They’re not supposed to tell you what security they need.
Who’s the expert again?
Um…yeah.
You.
But we often have trouble bridging that gap, nobody ends up happy, and everyone ends up pointing fingers at everyone else and saying how stupid they are because…
“They just don’t get it!”
Well, little camper, it’s time to change that.
If you want to know how to really understand what you need to do to enable and support any of the core customers you have as security – and build as strong of a professional relationship with them as possible – then you’ll want to make sure you subscribe to the print Security Sanity newsletter this month.
The whole issue is about how to do just that.
Subscription details are here: https://securitysanity.com
Stay safe,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
