Clause 7.2 with no customers (yet)

[curzio.basso]

Dear all,

my company is developing a software that will be marketed as a service for businesses. As such, the input requirements to the D&D process have been collected based on the hypothetical customers of the market segment the service will be targeted to.

I am now wondering what are the customers the clause 7.2 refers to, in this context. Are they the above-mentioned hypothetical customers, or the actual customers who will purchase the service once D&D process will be completed? In the first case I see the D&D of the product and its delivery as a service as a single process, where the input requirements are refined as the knowledge about the customer gets deeper. In the latter case as two different processes, with the delivery of the service with its own separate input requirements, but I don't know if that makes much sense.

Am I misreading completely the standard? I think I am missing something fundamental here....

Thanks to everyone so kind to give me a word of advice.

 

[Marcelo]

The customer is usually the end-buyer of the product or service.

The definition from ISO 9000 is:

3.3.5
customer
organization (3.3.1) or person that receives a product (3.4.2)
EXAMPLE Consumer, client, end-user, retailer, beneficiary and purchaser.
NOTE A customer can be internal or external to the organization.

You create a product or service based on some need (the need to the customer which will buy the product or service).

It does not mean that you have to know everything about the costumer on the first place.

So you can begin the design process with some generic information and refine the product or service along the way.

But the hypothetical costumers and actual costumer should in the end be the same, hopefully

 

[AndyN]

In an organization with a heavy design "front end" (like innovative products, software etc.) it's not unusual to have sales/marketing define the "customer" requirements, without an actual customer having direct input. This should present no issue. It (actual customer requirements) becomes part of the process when an inquiry is received to actually buy the product. This is an area of the standard which many find confusing, since the way the standard is laid out, it implies that you MUST have a customer before you do design. It's not that way in reality. Often there's innovation and a market offering, based on taking the risk of actually designing something first.