On the 4th of Dec Canberra hosted the Australian Business Analysis Association (ABAA) User Group Meeting and Christmas Drinks. It was an excellent opportunity for those interested in business and system analysis to get together and discuss the development of the profession. Matthew Hodgson from SMS Management and Technology presented on user-centred design and prototyping. Matt delivered a very inspirational and passionate presentation and I’m sure we now have new BA converts to prototyping.
In his presentation, Matt suggested that “as business analysts, we’re often focused on eliciting business requirements for systems, managing the relationships between the business owners and the vendors and developers of the technology. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget that what we’re doing is delivering a system that is for users. This results in us delivering the ‘what’ in terms of requirements, but forgetting that there’s a very strong need to find out from the people who will use systems the ‘how’ it will work for them”.
Matt works as an Information Architect and this is exactly the head-space that drives IA activities. In his presentation Matt suggests that IA and concept design can help “to determine navigation paradigms that are truly usable and accessible and systems that are designed to meet people’s needs in an intuitive way, rather than systems by developers that you have to ‘learn’ how to use”. Matt also stressed that “User-centred design seeks to change all that by putting the user as the focus of all project activities, from scoping, to analysis and requirements gathering, all the way through design and delivery”.
I think Matt makes raises some really interesting points about the focus on User Centred design, that as BAs we should consider. I believe it is really important to remember when you are developing requirements that as Business Analysts, we are NOT the Users. It’s not about us, it’s about the Users and what they need and how they will interact with this system. By using iterative prototyping, you can uncover the User’s need in consultation with them and use prototyping as a means of communication and eliciting and refining requirements. This will ultimately save a lot of development time and money.
My friend Matt is presenting at the next Business Analysis user group meeting for the ABAA. He is talking about Iterative Prototyping and user centred Design. I have seen Matt present and blog on this topic so it promises to be a great presentation. Hope you can join us. I will ask Matt to post the slides on his blog after the event so stay tuned.
Australian Business Analysis Association
User Group Meeting & End of Year Drinks
ABAA members and business analysis colleagues are cordially invited to attend the ABAA User Group Meeting to be held onTuesday the 4th of December 2007 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.
Please join us for an exciting presentation
“Iterative Prototyping & User Centred Design”
by Matthew Hodgson (Regional Lead for Web & IM at SMS Consulting)
Followed by
Christmas drinks and nibbles in celebration of another successful year for the ABAA.
Venue: SMS Management and Technology
Ground Floor 8 Brindabella Circuit, Canberra Airport
RSVP: by the 30th Nov 2007 actcomms@abaa.org.au
The Australian Business Analysis Association (ABAA) is a professional organisation which seeks to define, promote and support Business Analysis as a profession nation wide. Further information can be found at: http://www.abaa.org.au
I have an IA (information architecture) colleague Matt, who often lament that the BA screen concepts he reviews do not reflect user needs nor reflect how the users would like to interact with the system, particularly in a web environment. Matt comments that many of the documented screen concepts are designed to “talk” the developers through the use cases rather than the reflect the business user experience.
I have recently been involved in a project where it was difficult to articulate the needs of users in the requirements specifications, because the users did not really know what they wanted. They only knew what they didn’t want - their current system, which was described as “clunky”. The system was built in software that was no longer supported by the organisation and over a number of years, they had developed a number of manual “work arounds” of this system. The users were hard to engage as they had little time to discuss and review requirements and wanted the system asap. Sound familiar?
So I started with the basics and looked at their current processes, asked how they would like to work in the future, had meetings with various stakeholders and sought their advice on what inputs and outputs were required. The business area had little time to discuss the requirements and even less time to review formal documentation (that was technical in nature in order to inform the development team). Therefore I decided that to ensure I had got the specifications right, I would build a working prototype to show them how the system may look, feel and be used rather than using screen concepts. My aim was to involve the system users in defining the requirements to ensure I got the business needs right.
This concept worked well. This particular prototype was built in Axure, however there are a number of such software applications available that will do the same job. The application was able to simulate a working system and show the users how they would interact with the system rather than just showing them a series screen concepts. The application used allowed users to experiment and make comments about its useability and suitability to their needs. It was very much a communication tool to engage the user and ensure they were involved in the decision making process. The prototyping will be an iterative process to refine the requirements and should result in better definition of business requirements and eventually a better system.
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