The Zoo and their new price animal

So Today I would like to tell you a bit of a fairytale. This is the tale of The Zoo and its new price animal. The story goes like this.

The tale

There once upon a time was a zoo that felt it was missing the key ingredient that would make their zoo the envy of all the other zoos. They had an idea of what it was that they wanted, they had done some research and had heard about an animal in a far-off country that they thought would be just the thing they needed. Unfortunately, they had no way of acquiring this animal.

So they contacted a famous group of Biologists, to get their help to get this animal. They promised the group a lot of money and managed to get them to come. On the day of the fated meeting where the biologist was to be told what animal the zoo wanted, the zoologist who had done the research, unfortunately, had fallen ill. As such it was left to the remaining staff and zoo management to describe to the Biologists what it was that they wanted.

When the biologists asked the zoo staff what they wanted. They honestly answered that they did not know exactly what it was that they needed, as none of them had seen this animal, or been part of the research group that had identified the animal. All they knew was that it was a very special creature and that they needed to have it. The Biologists then asked the zoo staff if they could describe the creature. That they could do. The researcher had told them about it.

The Creature Is very big, it is white, it likes to catch fish. It came from far away. It needs to stay underwater for a long time. Have a good sense of smell. Oh, and it needs to be able to fly, that is important.

The biologists scratched their heads, they did not recognise this description. But not wanting to appear stupid, given all the money they had been paid, they nodded and said, “Ah, yes. We can get you a creature like this.” They vent back to their office in confusion. The description did not resemble anything that they had ever dealt with before. One junior Biologist asked if they should go back and ask again. The others rebuffed them, there is no need for that, they have given us the best description they can. It must be that they just aren’t as familiar with biological characteristics as us. We will need to manage on our own.

After a lot of consideration, they could find nothing that matched all the criteria that they had been given. Not wanting to break their promises, they set out to create a new creature that would fulfil the criteria.

They had many attempts and some features they were able to create, others they could not. Where they could not fulfil the criteria directly they decided to improvise, the zoo staff certainly would not notice all the time they didn’t know exactly what they wanted.

After some time the biologists returned to the Zoo. This time the original staff member who had identified the creature was present. The biologists proudly presented their work. They explained how they had stretched the boundaries of nature. Developed a way to speed up evolution to create the creature that the Zoo wanted. They uncovered the creature, and there it was:

An enormous white hippopotamus, hovering a few inches off the ground frantically flapping its wings that looked way too small. In one “hand,” it held a fishing rod for catching fish. At its neck there were gills.

The Gathered zoo staff were in aww, never had they seen a creature like this before. And they had managed to get all the points right. They were all happy and congratulated the biologists. All but the original researcher… Mortified he stood there looking at the creature. ”What have you done? All we wanted was an Albatross!”

Confused the biologists pointed to the list of criteria they had been given. And the researcher shook his head. They are almost correct. An Albatross is a large white bird native to a faraway land, that fishes for sustenance, it does this by diving underwater, utilising its lung capacity. And the sense of smell was a misunderstanding, the albatross has a great sense of direction.

Moral of the story

This is a cautionary tale. It illustrates the consequences of lack of communication between the people with a need, and the people performing a task. The danger of taking user requirements at face value. And of personal or group identity and ego getting in the way of asking questions and getting aid.

I wish I could say that this is purely a fantasy or a precautionary tale without roots in reality. Unfortunately, I and probably you can quite easily relate to the story. It is a tragically common story within the world of modernisation or a Customer-creator context. Unfortunately, the only remedy there is to do the hardest thing there is to communicate. And to make certain that the right people are in the room. People who know what is being requested.

I hope the story was enlightening and I hope it will provide you with a tool to help prevent the creation of any more flying white hippos.