Often requests come to us from stakeholders that are vaguely stated. That does not mean they won’t have expectations. It just means that they haven’t taken the time to think them through and articulate them. When you deliver, they’ll discover what their expectations were, and they’ll give you the hairy eyeball if you didn’t meet them.

There are two possible solutions to this problem. The first is to try to discover their expectations. Dig into the request. Understand its background and its purpose. Find out the parameters of the deliverable. This can work, but it requires them to be cooperative and to know what they want. If they had the patience and knowledge to do that, they probably would have done it from the beginning. So on to plan B.

Plan B is to tell them what you’re going to deliver. If they know what they want or at least can figure it out, they’ll correct you. If they don’t know what they want, you will fill the void. That way other notions can’t sneak in when you’re not looking. Either way, you’re better off than you would be if you guessed at what they wanted.