Booking a desk at the office (45)

My Improve QS colleagues and me wrote quite a few blogs about keeping the requirements in synch with the problem they are supposed to solve. Sometimes a solution seems quite simple and is easily implemented. At this moment the COVID pandemic is more under control and people feel safe to return to the office, back to the ‘old normal’. But still there are some rules to take into account so it seems a good idea to start using a tool to book seats in the office. Our company took care of that, so now we have an app for that. Problem solved.

The app looks OK. I can see which desks are taken, book one for myself and even see who is in the office. I think, however, I will look at it once or twice and after that I’ll forget to use it and simply go to the office and look for a place to work once I get there. Again, the app looks great, it seems to work fine and it has been tailored to our company and our buildings. Problem solved. Or is it?

I was not involved in the development process, but I can imagine a few things that went wrong and will cause the app not to be used. The first thing that comes to mind is the word ‘assumptions’. Was it assumed that people would massively want to return to the office? Not at this moment, it is a quarter past nine and?only about 10% of the desks are occupied. So there doesn’t seem to be a problem now. But I must admit it is hard to predict what will happen in a couple of months. Why not just ask people? Ask employees what they plan to do and what they need. One thing is obvious, they need a desk to work at, a chair to sit on. But for many that is not the sole reason to come to the office. Maybe they need certain resources, special equipment. They might need a special room for a meeting or a training. They might not be at the office the entire day, so they arrive at 11:00 and need a parking place. Again, I am also assuming a lot of things and didn’t do any elicitation. But that is exactly what is wrong. Without proper elicitation you still can come up with a nice tool, that looks great but it seems to solve something that is not a problem.

A couple of years ago I was at the office of a large bank looking for a room for about 10 people to provide a training. According to the ‘meeting room booking system’ of the company there was one available at the end of a hallway. As we passed all other rooms we saw most of them were not occupied although they were formally booked. Will this happen in our offices?too?

When I look at the app for booking a desk at the office I see on this nice map that only three out of about a hundred colored dots are red instead of green. Which means only three desks are occupied. If that is true there is no occupancy problem (at least not the problem that there would be not enough room). But is it? I must admit that if every dot were red and I really needed to be at the office I would probably pick up the phone and ask someone what the real situation was.

Maybe we already started with a false assumption: that we need a new tool for that. Maybe a simple phone call is currently sufficient. Maybe that’s why the ants in the picture didn’t build a bridge using twigs and leaves. There was no real problem to solve, they applied a pragmatic way to cross the gap. ‘Problem’ solved!

This article is an article in the series about the versatile profession of requirements engineering. Every week a colleague of?Improve Quality Services?will share with the reader an aspect of requirements engineers from daily experience. Every article begins with a picture of a bridge. The bridge visualizes connecting two sides. In requirements engineering connecting different stakeholders assisting the stakeholders in collaboration and communication about requirements.

Articles published till date (articles 1 till 28 in Dutch):

1.?Requirements?(Piet de Roo, December 1, 2020)

2.?Shared Understanding?(Kaspar van Dam, December 8, 2020)

3.?Context en requirements structuur?(Patrick Duisters, December 15, 2020)

4.?Van Twin Peaks naar Twin Pines?(Patrick Duisters, December 22, 2020)

5.?Modellen om te bouwen?(Erwin Pasmans, January 5, 2021)

6.?Minimaal Modelleren?(Piet de Roo, January 12 2021)

7.?Begrip en Vertrouwen?(Benjamin Timmermans, January 19, 2021)

8.?En wat als de specialisten het niet met elkaar eens zijn??(Benjamin Timmermans, January 26, 2021)

9.?Waar zijn we nou helemaal mee bezig?!?(Erwin Pasmans, February 2, 2021)

10.?Soft skills? Keiharde wetenschap!?(Kaspar van Dam, February 9, 2021)

11.?… en nu enkele feiten: Requirement Attributen?(Patrick Duisters, February 16, 2021)

12.?Waarom, waarom, waarom, ...?(Piet de Roo, February 23, 2021)

13.?Een leven lang zorgen?(Erwin Pasmans, March 2, 2021)

14.?Casus: Requirements management bij een distributiecentrum in aanbouw?(Eduard Hartog, March 11, 2021)

15.?Iteratief versus Incrementeel?(Kaspar van Dam, March 16, 2021)

16.?Requirements of-the-shelf: geen maatwerk, geen requirements??(Erwin Pasmans, March 23, 2021)

17.?Creatief door constraints?(Piet de Roo, March 30, 2021)

18.?3 Amigo’s?(Patrick Duisters, April 13, 2021)

19.?4 Amigos (of meer?)?(Patrick Duisters, April 20, 2021)

20.?Requirements, de CoronaCheck-app en Fred Flintstone?(Benjamin Timmermans, April 28, 2021)

21.?Meer kapiteins op 1 schip (of staan de beste stuurlui aan wal)??(Erwin Pasmans, May 4, 2021)

22.?Hoe SMART is SMART??(Benjamin Timmermans, May 11, 2021)

23.?Jip en Janneke?(Piet de Roo, May 18, 2021)

24.?Laten we het simpel houden?(Patrick Duisters, May 25, 2021)

25.?Dilemma's?(Erwin Pasmans, June 1, 2021)

26.?Living Documentation Event 2021?(Kaspar van Dam, June 8, 2021)

27.?Non-functional Requirements?(Patrick Duisters, June 15, 2021)

28.?The Big Shift?(Kaspar van Dam, June 22, 2021)

29.?Why do we have these problems over and over again??(Erwin Pasmans, June 29, 2021)

30.?Non-functionals, who cares??(Benjamin Timmermans, July 6, 2021)

31.?Usability and UX, a revelation I had?(Benjamin Timmermans, July 13, 2021)

32.?How??(Piet de Roo, July 20, 2021)

33.?Requirements and design??(Erwin Pasmans, July 27, 2021)

34.?Tom's people skills to deal with the customers?(Piet de Roo, August 3, 2021)

35.?Requirements creep: the ideal pocketknife with 3000 functions?(Benjamin Timmermans, August 10, 2021)

36.?Requirements creep: good or bad??(Benjamin Timmermans, August 17, 2021)

37.?End with the begin in mind?(Piet de Roo, August 24, 2021)

38.?Requirements: Do we really need them??(Kaspar van Dam, August 31, 2021)

39.?Begin with the End in Mind?(Patrick Duisters, September 7, 2021)

40.?Solving the right problem?(Piet de Roo, September 14, 2021)

41.?Adapt requirements (and your process) to your development approach!?(Erwin Pasmans, September 21, 2021)

42.?ISTQB and IREB are joining forces?(Piet de Roo, September 28, 2021)

43.?New stakeholders?(Benjamin Timmermans, October 5, 2021)

44. Just start over again (Erwin Pasmans, October 12, 2021)