Project Quality Management; Save Trouble with Early Customer Scenario Walkthroughs

How many times have you managed a software project only to find too late in the game that there's something that wasn't thought of earlier?

To avoid this fate, try doing a customer scenario walkthrough. This can be done by profiling the different types of customers you have and various scenarios by which they might use your product.

If prototypes can be used all the better, but even without that, it's good to at least mentally walk though the scenarios. Discussing requirements isn't enough, as the requirements are often taken out of context and key points are missed. The key is to interview the users/customers and find out how they'd actually need to use the product.

Marketing organizations have done this for years to test market a potential product, and as project managers we can learn from this. See Geoffrey Moore's book, Crossing the Chasm, for example, which recommends doing such a walkthrough before attemping to launch a new product.

Here's a good website that talks about doing "usability walkthroughs," which is essentially the same thing.

Design Technologies: Usability Walkthrough