When it asks you

Most of the time the builder decides and tells you what it did. Sometimes the decision is genuinely yours, and the answer is not a sentence.

Which of these forty columns is the customer's name. Which of these sheets should become screens. Is this the structure we found in your spreadsheet.

Asked in the conversation, those produce a paragraph back that then has to be interpreted, and it is wrong often enough to matter. So the builder puts a screen in front of you instead.

The one it always asks#

Every first build stops, early, and puts up the same question: is this the right shape for your records? A table, one row per kind of thing the application will keep — what it is called, what it holds in your words, and the fields that matter.

It is filled in already, from your brief. The usual answer is to read it, correct a row and press the button.

This one is asked every time because the cost of being wrong is lopsided. A screen is an afternoon to change afterwards; the records underneath it are not, and everything built on top has to move with them. It is also the moment you are most likely to notice something obvious about your own business that you would never have thought to write down — a site visit has two engineers, not one — and noticing it now is a row in a table rather than a rebuild.

Add rows for anything missing, change what is wrong, and take out what you do not need. If it is right as it stands, press the button and it carries on.

What it looks like#

A tab appears at the front of the strip — Your answer — and opens itself. You get the question, a sentence about why it is being asked, and the right control for each part of it: a table you can correct cell by cell, a list with an explanation under each option, a box to type in.

The build is stopped, waiting on it. It carries on the moment you answer, with your answer in hand rather than a guess.

Answering it#

Press the button at the bottom. It says what it is going to do — Build it like this, Use these tables — rather than Submit.

Anything the builder proposed is filled in already. Often the right answer is to read it, change one thing and press the button.

Not answering it#

Let it decide takes the question away. The builder is told nobody answered, decides for itself, and says what it assumed — which is what it would have done if it had never asked.

Worth using when the question is not one you have an opinion about. A build waiting on somebody is not making progress.

What it will not do#

The builder is told to ask only when the decision is really yours, and to ask one thing at a time. It should not be asking permission for ordinary work, or asking you something you already said in the brief.

If it asks too much, say so in the conversation — stop asking me, use your judgement — and it will.

Who can answer#

Anyone who can change the application. A viewer sees the question and what is being decided, but cannot answer it: the answer changes what gets built.