The foundation of communication is that both parties must use a common language. If I speak Polish and my client speaks English, it’s obvious that we won’t understand each other. However, just speaking the same language doesn’t guarantee mutual understanding 😉
Immediately
Let’s consider the following situation:
- We’re creating a real estate sales platform for a client. This platform needs a highly functional search engine – clients should be able to search for properties based on any parameters.
- Additionally, the client wants to allow their managers to change property prices even after the property is listed on the site.
- We are pondering how to achieve this. A good idea might be to use a separate database for the listing page, focusing on fast content searches.
- However, this could cause a consistency issue – when a manager saves changes, they appear first in the main database and later in the search database. Between these synchronizations, the system state will be “inconsistent” – we might see outdated data.
- We then ask, “Should the price changes be immediately visible on the listing page?”
- The client responds affirmatively. So, we are left figuring out how to manage this in a single database. But is that really necessary?
The word “immediately” is a trap word here. Different groups interpret “immediately” differently:
- Technical people - Consistency at the system level, ensuring no discrepancies between databases.
- Real estate managers - They don’t want to wait all day to see changes. It’s enough if the data is visible when they return from getting coffee from the kitchen.
Trap Words
Just because we use the same words doesn’t mean we understand them in the same way. Especially when using words that don’t have strictly quantitative definitions. These words have precise meanings only within specific (business) contexts. “Immediately” for high-frequency trading will be very different than for industries where time isn’t as critical.
Therefore, when we use such vague terminology in our discussions, we naturally expose ourselves to problems. We fall into traps we’ve set for ourselves. We ask a question, receive an answer, but it doesn’t bring us closer to understanding the problem. On the contrary, it distances us from achieving our goal.
So, pay attention to the precision of your language. If you hear vague words from your interlocutors, ask for their exact meaning. Ask for numbers, cases, scenarios, specific situations. This will help avoid unpleasant conversations when it comes to implementing the final solution.
Other Trap Words
Below are examples of other trap words, along with their different interpretations for various business areas.
Available
The system should be widely available to our users:
- Corporate environments - From 6 AM to 9 PM on weekdays. Problems outside these hours are acceptable.
- College registration - From June to October, around the clock. After that, longer breaks are permissible.
- Property monitoring - The system must operate 24/7. We can schedule maintenance windows in advance, preferably during daylight hours.
Secure
The system should be secure:
- Finance and payments - Each payment operation should be confirmed by an app/SMS to prevent unauthorized access.
- Baby food production - We must be able to trace the origin of every product batch in case of child poisoning.
- Medical software - The system must guarantee that the machine administers the correct drug dose to the patient.
Easy to Use
Our system must be easy to use, hassle-free.
- E-commerce - The purchasing process shouldn’t distract customers, reducing the number of incomplete purchases.
- Property administration - We don’t want our administrators to click through multiple pages to see a building summary.
- Product management - I want to be able to change anything about everything; I don’t want the system to limit me.
Large
We plan for significant traffic in our system/a large number of clients.
- Home IoT devices - We have hundreds of thousands of small devices, each sending a few KB of data per hour.
- B2B platform - We have 100 clients a day, but each order contains hundreds/thousands of items.
- Restaurant orders - At lunchtime, hundreds of thousands of people visit our site.
Scalable
Our system must be scalable to meet customer needs:
- City bikes - When people go to work, 10x more bikes are rented than during other hours.
- Atmospheric data analysis - Our monitoring stations send vast gigabytes of data once an hour, with no activity between these periods.
- Concert ticket sales - When ticket sales open for a popular concert, traffic can reach thousands of requests per second. No one expects to handle it all, but at least the system shouldn’t crash.
Final Question
What other trap words do you know? How did they affect your project/product/system? Let me know in the comments 😀
