Whenever I talk to a customer about something which is clearly in my domain (anything related to web application development), I try to ensure that everything I want to say first goes through a ‘customer translator’ which turns my domain knowledge into something they might understand. This translator works in the opposite direction too.

However, I’ve realised this week that this approach is sometimes required for people who work in the same domain or have similar roles to me. The benefit of using domain knowledge and terminology is that it allows you to be explicit and succinct. However, if others aren’t being as explicit or succinct as you think they should be (inferring their expected expertise) then problems can occur. My advice is to question everything, especially if it just seems wrong. Sometimes just one character can make all the difference.