# If you don't understand why, you are not ready to build it
Autonomy · principle · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/03-03-if-you-dont-understand-why-you-are-not-ready-to-build-it.html

## The reflex

The request is written and you could start. Yet the expected result stays vague enough that you hesitate between several ways of doing it.

## The builder's reflex

Ask what problem the work has to solve, and for whom. If the answer stays vague, make a quick version and show it.

## Why

A request passes through several people. At each relay, a detail drops. Sometimes it is the one that changes the solution.

A customer cannot find their invoices. The request becomes "add a search". Looking at one case, the team finds the invoices are attached to another account. The search would have shipped, clean and useless.

A first attempt is the fastest way to understand. With today's tools it takes an hour: a prototype shown to the person who asked answers faster than a meeting. For what cannot be undone, a heavy commitment or a contract, clarify first.

If you are starting out, ask for a concrete example of the expected result. If you hand work over, give the why with the what. Work with no clear goal forces the other person to guess. A role too: if you cannot say what problem it solves, do not open it.

## Try this

Before a task, write down your assumption:

> I understand this has to let [who] [do what], because today [difficulty]. Is that right?

Send it before you start. If the answer is slow to come, make the one-hour version and send that instead. After the first attempt, compare the result to the goal and correct your reading.

## To discuss

On which task would a clarification of the goal change our next decision?