The Blind Men and the Elephant parable is a typical situation in my workflow software business.

Literally right now, I'm dealing with such a situation.

I have two different users from the same customer: Felicia of Finance Manager and Patricia of Project Manager telling me conflicting accounts on who should be responsible for updating estimated budget in the vendor quotation system I have built for them.

My job then becomes understanding their partial view of the value stream in order to build a complete picture of how the value stream should look like.

Which in turn informs the system I will build.

In other words, I combine all the blind men's limited description to figure out what the entire elephant should look like.

Users Typically Describe Prominent Stuff

Assuming that different users are describing different and partial aspects of the same bigger whole, I've noticed their descriptions tend to be about prominent things.

Using the analogy of a house, users tend to describe the roof and walls of a house. The things that are visible. They seldom describe the pillars and the foundation.

Similarly, if you try to see a pattern of the blind men's description, it's mostly prominent and obvious parts of the larger elephant.

Imagine the Foundation that Holds All the Prominent Stuff

Now my job now is to imagine what kind of foundational material that contains all the prominent stuff the different users have described.

And in a way that allows these seemingly contradictory viewpoints to co-exist harmoniously.

Foundation doesn't just mean more stuff. It also refers to the structure and arrangement of the individual parts.

How they should be put together to form a coherent whole.

Take Customer Requests Seriously But Not Literally

The users have been doing their jobs longer than I have been building the system for them.

Whatever they have been doing, their partial worldview and workflow works for them. Otherwise, it would have long crumbled. So, I have to take them seriously but not literally.

Knowing the distinction between what's foundational and what's prominent allows me to build a system that serves these disparate interests while maintaining a coherent whole.