4 ms·

> Then, 3 weeks into the process, with the orders still coming, Marcus pointedly asked him about why they were ordering so much more than the 6,000 bags they h

> Then, 3 weeks into the process, with the orders still coming, Marcus pointedly asked him about why they were ordering so much more than the 6,000 bags they had originally predicted. The food broker laughed and said “I wondered why you’ve been so upset and concerned. When they said ‘units’, that was cases. They’re right on target so far.” You can imagine how we felt in that moment, realizing that the person we hired to make this a smooth transition and to guide us and to tell us the things we don’t know failed to ever ask us if we were ready for a 36,000 bag order. This is equivalent to a year and a half’s worth of coffee for us. We would NEVER have agreed to this had we known. It was more than we could physically or financially handle. We immediately severed our relationship with this food broker figuring at this point we were better off figuring this out without him. > “I wondered why you’ve been so upset and concerned. When they said ‘units’, that was cases. Ouch. I get a lot of flak at work and at home when I get irritated that people don't use the right words and terms and this story won't change my attitude. Eg: - "we want a new tab on the website" -> they want a new subdomain with a whole new CMS and a link in menus of every site - "we want a new site to highlight this thing" -> they want a single page with a photo and a paragraph but want to be able to change it themselves at will

HillRat 4y ago
One thing that I came back to time and time again while consulting is that most operational problems are, in whole or in part, language problems, in the Wittgenstein sense. I worked with a lot of clients to define and document “linguistic boundaries” in their organizations where terms could abruptly change their meanings, and then used that to help silos communicate more effectively with each other.
- halkony 4y ago
  Can you provide good reading, books, etc on this skill? I'm a junior dev and I notice this everywhere in my org. I'm just dipping my toes into DDD by Evans but it's a bit opaque to me.
  - HillRat 4y ago
    I think a good place to start is through the service design lens — “This is Service Design Thinking/Doing,” Jon Kolko’s books, and IDEO’s handbook (all available on Amazon). These are all practical, business-oriented works, and will give you the language and tools you need to interact with service designers or conduct your own explorations. In the tech side, I still think there’s a lot of value in reading through Booch and friends, even if you don’t go on to use UML in a formal way, and even old, deprecated approaches to modeling (think Shlaer-Mellor) can be valuable as an introduction to more modern (and generally more complicated) approaches to domain modeling. For more academic and less practical works, look into philosophers of language and communication (Rorty, Habermas, Latour, etc) — if you don’t have a background there, try the “Very Short Introduction” series, which gives a good grounding before moving into further secondary or primary literature. What you get from these writers is a way to think about language, communications, and complex systems, so you’re building a conceptual toolkit. (Analytic philosophy, which is another, “mainstream” branch of philosophy, also has applications in the formal comp-sci route.) Sociology and STS (Science and Technology Studies) kind of occupies a practical middle-ground between philosophy and design; I’ve often said that when we do service design, we’re really just doing folk sociology. There’s no shortage of textbooks, but I’d recommend looking into academic field guides for ethnographic studies (a fancy term for “going out and talking to people about what they do”) and ethnomethodological studies (a fancy term for “going out and talking to people about what they believe”). While the service design books will give you practical tools for conducting workshops and research programs, sociology books will give you a firm grounding on why those tools are used, and how to theorize effectively on what you uncover. I also like measurement theory, which is a branch of psychology concerned with understanding how to define measures and metrics — great tools for clearly defining data and reporting. Finally, in addition to all this, consider digging into a corporate finance text or two; the three legs of the stool are product and service design; technical and operational architecture; and finance and sales. If you can read your company’s balance sheet and cash flow statements, you’ll be in a much better position to understand where you need to target investments, what the likely return on investment will be, and how much cash (or debt) is available to make things happen. Start building up a good knowledge base in all those areas, and you’ll have the tools necessary to know the “where, how, and why” to apply the “what” of technology to your organization’s problems.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
I worked for a web agency a while ago, where they embraced DDD and like the first few meetings with the client were only focused on creating a ubiquitous language and defining common terminology in order to avoid misunderstandings, it takes a bit of bootstrap but it's the best way to work with people who are not technical. Probably food distribution could make some use for it too as far as I can see from the post
- yesfitz 4y ago
  Does DDD mean domain-driven design[1]? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design
  - lnxg33k1 4y ago
    Yep Edit: specifically of this concept https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UbiquitousLanguage.html https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UbiquitousLanguage.html
  - sdfhbdf 4y ago
    Not OP but judging from context i’m fairly certain yes it does. DDD mess Domain Driven Design in this case. From my limited experience with DDD it revolves a lot around terminology and right word choice.
drewcoo 4y ago
> people don't use the right words and terms Your examples are people "being helpful" by "figuring it out for you" when they don't understand all the specifics. Yes, that's an annoying problem any specialist deals with. The article is about something that should have had clarity in a contract. It's the kind if situation that should involve lawyers.
- autotune 4y ago
  If you read TFA it explains that they did consult their lawyer before and after, but that fighting them on it would cost more time and money than they could afford.
  - c22 4y ago
    It does not say that they consulted their lawyer "before and after". They say: "...yes, we do have a lawyer and we are currently following the advice of our lawyer in everything we are doing. We can challenge the contract but legal fees could run over $30,000 and take years." Which kind of sounds like they might have hired a lawyer after the fact in an attempt to 'fix' the situation.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  > Your examples are people "being helpful" by "figuring it out for you" when they don't understand all the specifics. Oh, this definitely happens but then I just explain how things work and what it means. But it also happens a lot with people who should know better than that (with the job title and all).
foreverCarlos 4y ago
I noticed that some PMs (and now also engineers) use “tab” in place of “page”. So “adding a tab” means “adding a page”. I was very confused by that and still have to double check what they mean each time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
I’m deeply in love with “webpage” now being called a “microsite” of course at double the cost.
elondaits 4y ago
I HATED people saying “we want to add a shopping cart to the website” (i.e. we want to implement a full e-commerce solution for our business that currently has none). Not because the term was wrong, but because they thought about the icon in the corner and not the logistics, legal considerations, plus whole new tech platform. Often it was mentioned almost as an afterthought… a line item in the feature list for a quote for the development of a new website.

HillRat 4y ago

One thing that I came back to time and time again while consulting is that most operational problems are, in whole or in part, language problems, in the Wittgenstein sense. I worked with a lot of clients to define and document “linguistic boundaries” in their organizations where terms could abruptly change their meanings, and then used that to help silos communicate more effectively with each other.

halkony 4y ago
Can you provide good reading, books, etc on this skill? I'm a junior dev and I notice this everywhere in my org. I'm just dipping my toes into DDD by Evans but it's a bit opaque to me.
- HillRat 4y ago
  I think a good place to start is through the service design lens — “This is Service Design Thinking/Doing,” Jon Kolko’s books, and IDEO’s handbook (all available on Amazon). These are all practical, business-oriented works, and will give you the language and tools you need to interact with service designers or conduct your own explorations. In the tech side, I still think there’s a lot of value in reading through Booch and friends, even if you don’t go on to use UML in a formal way, and even old, deprecated approaches to modeling (think Shlaer-Mellor) can be valuable as an introduction to more modern (and generally more complicated) approaches to domain modeling. For more academic and less practical works, look into philosophers of language and communication (Rorty, Habermas, Latour, etc) — if you don’t have a background there, try the “Very Short Introduction” series, which gives a good grounding before moving into further secondary or primary literature. What you get from these writers is a way to think about language, communications, and complex systems, so you’re building a conceptual toolkit. (Analytic philosophy, which is another, “mainstream” branch of philosophy, also has applications in the formal comp-sci route.) Sociology and STS (Science and Technology Studies) kind of occupies a practical middle-ground between philosophy and design; I’ve often said that when we do service design, we’re really just doing folk sociology. There’s no shortage of textbooks, but I’d recommend looking into academic field guides for ethnographic studies (a fancy term for “going out and talking to people about what they do”) and ethnomethodological studies (a fancy term for “going out and talking to people about what they believe”). While the service design books will give you practical tools for conducting workshops and research programs, sociology books will give you a firm grounding on why those tools are used, and how to theorize effectively on what you uncover. I also like measurement theory, which is a branch of psychology concerned with understanding how to define measures and metrics — great tools for clearly defining data and reporting. Finally, in addition to all this, consider digging into a corporate finance text or two; the three legs of the stool are product and service design; technical and operational architecture; and finance and sales. If you can read your company’s balance sheet and cash flow statements, you’ll be in a much better position to understand where you need to target investments, what the likely return on investment will be, and how much cash (or debt) is available to make things happen. Start building up a good knowledge base in all those areas, and you’ll have the tools necessary to know the “where, how, and why” to apply the “what” of technology to your organization’s problems.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

I worked for a web agency a while ago, where they embraced DDD and like the first few meetings with the client were only focused on creating a ubiquitous language and defining common terminology in order to avoid misunderstandings, it takes a bit of bootstrap but it's the best way to work with people who are not technical. Probably food distribution could make some use for it too as far as I can see from the post

yesfitz 4y ago
Does DDD mean domain-driven design[1]? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design
- lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Yep Edit: specifically of this concept https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UbiquitousLanguage.html https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UbiquitousLanguage.html
- sdfhbdf 4y ago
  Not OP but judging from context i’m fairly certain yes it does. DDD mess Domain Driven Design in this case. From my limited experience with DDD it revolves a lot around terminology and right word choice.

drewcoo 4y ago

> people don't use the right words and terms Your examples are people "being helpful" by "figuring it out for you" when they don't understand all the specifics. Yes, that's an annoying problem any specialist deals with. The article is about something that should have had clarity in a contract. It's the kind if situation that should involve lawyers.

autotune 4y ago
If you read TFA it explains that they did consult their lawyer before and after, but that fighting them on it would cost more time and money than they could afford.
- c22 4y ago
  It does not say that they consulted their lawyer "before and after". They say: "...yes, we do have a lawyer and we are currently following the advice of our lawyer in everything we are doing. We can challenge the contract but legal fees could run over $30,000 and take years." Which kind of sounds like they might have hired a lawyer after the fact in an attempt to 'fix' the situation.
johnchristopher 4y ago
> Your examples are people "being helpful" by "figuring it out for you" when they don't understand all the specifics. Oh, this definitely happens but then I just explain how things work and what it means. But it also happens a lot with people who should know better than that (with the job title and all).

foreverCarlos 4y ago

I noticed that some PMs (and now also engineers) use “tab” in place of “page”. So “adding a tab” means “adding a page”. I was very confused by that and still have to double check what they mean each time.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bombcar 4y ago

I’m deeply in love with “webpage” now being called a “microsite” of course at double the cost.

elondaits 4y ago

I HATED people saying “we want to add a shopping cart to the website” (i.e. we want to implement a full e-commerce solution for our business that currently has none). Not because the term was wrong, but because they thought about the icon in the corner and not the logistics, legal considerations, plus whole new tech platform. Often it was mentioned almost as an afterthought… a line item in the feature list for a quote for the development of a new website.