What is its job?

There's often a challenge in moving from the ‘what’ to the ‘why’ in the projects I work on. It’s easy for people to think about a deliverable, about something specific that they need. But it is much harder to figure out exactly why they need it, why it's valuable to them and what their true expectations are for it.

To help with this what-to-why shift, I find it useful to almost anthropomorphise the thing (be it a website, app, campaign… or who knows what), putting the deliverable aspect to one side for a moment, and ask what its job is. If they were hiring this thing today, how would its job description read?

This approach can lead on to other interesting thoughts and discussions: How would they understand its performance at appraisals? How would they help support it? If it asked for a raise or a promotion, what then (and how would they know it was asking)? Do they need to hire a team around it? Discussions like these encourage us to consider the thing’s place in the business now and in the future.