I have a friend who is an agronomist consultant.  He was retained by a group of growers to determine an optimal watering plan for their crops.  Too much water or too little water reduces crop production.  The amount of water needed depends on the state of growth of the plant, time of day of the watering, the weather, soil conditions, slope of the field, the crop, and other items.  Sometimes water companies try to influence when growers water by varying the cost, sometimes this does effect the cost-benefit calculation.  My consultant friend was hired, so he believed, to find a watering schedule that maximized farm profit.  We need to focus on profit rather than maximizing crop production, because one must consider the cost of additional water versus the probable cost of increased income due to increase in crop production.  Not an easy problem, but quite feasible if you have the right information and the right analytic skills.  My friend came up with a schedule that the growers followed as long as the consultant was there to see that it was followed.  There was no question that the schedule increased profits.  A year after leaving my friend learned that the growers had abandoned the schedule.  When he inquired the growers said, "Well, things happen and it was such a bother." Not much of an explanation, since the growers were acknowledging they were abandoning a profitable activity.  It was six years more before my friend learned the real reason.  The schedule often required the growers to go into the fields and manually adjust the watering at the same time as their weekly poker game. 

Apparently one of the wants was to have the freedom to go play poker with the guys.  It never occurred to the growers that the schedule my friend would set up would interfere with their weekly poker game.  And after the fact, I guess they just didn't want to say, "We really meant that we want maximum profit from our watering schedule unless it interferes with the weekly poker game, or something else that we would rather be doing that is more important than a few more dollars."

The very nature of specifying requirements will generally leave some want unstated.  Sometimes this will not matter.  The best watering schedule might not have been in conflict with the poker game.  Sometimes it does matter.  There are usually some number of unstated wants that have to be discovered.

ç  Prior Page of Text    Next Page of Text è
(C) 2005-2014 Wayne M. Angel.  All rights reserved.