Marketing — the Thread That Connects Everything

The Drill

There's a story marketing people never tire of: the drill and the hole. It spread through the writing of Harvard Business School's Theodore Levitt:

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!

Nobody wants the drill. They want the hole it makes.

For us engineers, this is exactly the gap between requirements and functional specs. The requirement is "I want a hole." The functional spec is "build an electric drill." Confuse the two, and something grim is waiting for you at UAT (user acceptance testing).

The spec says electric drill — but if a hole is what's wanted, a hand drill delivers too. When the schedule slips, the place you return to is always the value being delivered. Wait — why electric? Does it need to be electric? Do we even need the attachment system? Oh no, it's corded, not battery — who is using this, and where?

Dialogue

Talk specs with business folks at work and the conversation never quite lands. Ask "is 2000mAh enough for the battery?" and you get back a puzzled "…what are you talking about?"

Ask toward the purpose instead, and it goes like this:

• Is the material you're drilling hard?
• Is hand-drilling too slow — does it need to be powered?
• Will it be used in one place, or on the move?
• Would an hour of continuous run time cover it?

Understood — designing for one hour of continuous operation (2000mAh). Now it's a conversation. Speak to the value being delivered, or the talk goes nowhere and the design can miss by a mile. Marketing is a serious factor in systems work, too.