How to explain to the customer the essence of the work of the backend?

mr_drinkens2017-06-15 01:30:20

Work organization

mr_drinkens, 2017-06-15 01:30:20

Hello.
A few offtopic questions, more for reasoning) I would like to hear exactly working methods.
Everyone knows that often customers have little understanding of the essence of what is generally done on the backend and how long it takes. The frontend is understandable, as the customer sees it visually, clicks on it, and so on.
For the first time in practice, I got a customer who thinks that the backend is simple and there is nothing to do there)
How do you explain to your customers what you are doing under the "hood" of the project?
Thanks

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6 answer(s)

Worddoc, 2017-06-15
@Worddoc

The main thing in each sentence is to insert the words "server" and "databases" and he will lag behind you.

Therapyx, 2017-06-15
@Therapyx

If a person is stubborn on his own wave - believe me, nothing.
It's like with friends who find out that you can make websites, and then offer your great business plans to take over the world for xxx hours of working time. You tell them, explain what and how, explain the whole essence of the development. And in response you hear stuffing, like:
- but what to do there? It's a couple of buttons to draw.
- Silence... Just say that you don't know how! :D
But what I learned: Never try to explain the humanities technical part. If he is confident in his rightness and the ease of the task.
Imagine that you have a child in front of you and you are trying to explain to him on your fingers, examples from life and preferably those close to him. Find out who he is by profession and try to give analogies from his field in complete abstraction.
If you don’t find out who he is and whether he fumbles in something at all, then you can take something neutral. For example, "cars", although even here it may turn out that he is just a consumer and, apart from two pedals, was not interested in anything else)

Eugene, 2017-06-15
@immaculate

This is a philosophical question. If a person is adequate, even if not a techie, you can try to calmly explain. If a person is inadequate, then no explanations will help, you don’t even have to try, there will still be continuous problems. He will go to some freelance exchange, where he will find a “backend developer with vast experience”, who will promise to make him a backend in 3 days and 1500 rubles. It will do three months, eventually roll out a broken terrible code, then another developer will try to bring it to a working state for 6 months, in the meantime the customer may realize his mistake and become a little smarter. Or it won't.

Egor Zhivagin, 2017-06-15
@Krasnodar_etc

"The backend receives data from the Base, processes it for the necessary tasks and sends it to the Front." I had enough)
If the conversation comes to "why so long?" you can sit down and tell the customer in detail, with terminology, what you are doing. He will understand - well, he will not understand - he will be afraid of terms

Vladimir Dubos, 2017-06-15
@vovaduba

Try to find / write some code for several pages and try to tell what functions and why it performs, i.e. explain with a concrete example of another project

Saboteur, 2017-06-15
@saboteur_kiev

Show what is under the hood of the car.
And to show that "just turn the ignition key" requires the interaction of about 4 different systems - "chip = battery = starter = fuel pump = injector = engine". And you just turned the key.