From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Who is the customer?

From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Who is the customer?

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- Do you know who your customer is as an agile BA? I want to take a look at this and challenge who our customer is as we work on requirements. Using the online coffee store payment's functionality example we previously looked at, if a stakeholder asks you to make a modification to the payment feature on the app, who's your customer? Well, it could be the stakeholder who requested the modification or the bank that processes the payment transactions, the business leader paying for it, the payments manager or the user of the app making a payment. As a BA there are many perspectives on who your customer is. Some perspectives are more accurate than others. The most misguided definition of customer is the requester of the product, feature, or modification. In most cases, the requester is not close to the end customer and are simply guessing at how to solve a problem or create an opportunity. They're absolutely someone we need to work with and serve as a BA, but they are rarely the real customer. The best way to get the right solution and deliver value is to recognize this and think like an end customer. So who is your end customer? And how do you use every request, experiment, user story, and requirement to delight them? The same is usually true for the third party users, internal users, and business leaders. BAs need to consider their insights and needs, but if we let their needs take priority, we take a big risk that our solution will not deliver value to the real customers. The real customer is the end customer, the customer who buys the product or service. Without them, the company would go bankrupt. End customers should be the focus of every product, feature or modification. Even the most mundane backlog item has an end customer impact and the most successful BAs dig until they find it. Here's another example that goes a little deeper. The manager of the online coffee store call center requests a backlog item to provide the customer service agents with more relevant information about the caller on the customer dashboard screen. In this example, we want to view the customer not as the call center manager, not as the agent, but rather the end customer calling in. In order to deliver value in this request, we must look at the end customer's calling experience and the problems the call center manager is trying to solve. Then work to address what the needs of the agent has in serving the end customer better. When we focus on the end customer, we get to the real problem and the root cause faster. It's not about the information on the dashboard screen, it's about helping the agent serve the end customer. Once this shift in context is made, better questions get asked that lead to higher-quality and higher-value solutions. Connecting everything you do to the customer will bring purpose and satisfaction to all aspects of your BA work.

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