Investigating the business situation Flashcards
Name the investigation techniques
- Interviews
- Workshops
- Observation
- Scenarios
- Prototyping
- User role analysis
- Quantative approaches
What are the areas of consideration in interviews?
- Current fucntions - What functions need to be included in the new system?
- Problems with the current functions
- New features that may be required
List advantages and disadvantages of interviews
Advantages:
* Builds relationships with stakeholders
* Information from key personell
* Understand different viewpoints
Disadvantages:
* Time consuming
* Expensive if travel is required
* Isolated perspective
What are the 4 Whys in interviews?
Who? - Key Stakeholders, STOP model
Why? - What can the person add to the process
What? - Understand areas that need discussing
When & Where? - Time and place for interview
Describe the STOP model
S - Strategic Level Management (Confirm, understand, agree)
T - Tactical Level Management (Performance, Targets, Control)
OP - Operational Level (Performers)
Name disadvantages and advantages of a workshop
Advantages:
* Gain a broad range of views
* Increased speed and productivity
* obtain concensus view and buy-in to project
Disadvantages:
* Time-consuming and expensive
* Finding suitable time
* Undue influence of dominant personalities
* Limited authority of participants
Name Workshop techniques
Discovery
* Round robin
* Brainstorming
* Brainwriting
* Post-it excercise
* Stepwise refinement
* Break-out groups
Visualisation
* Process Models
* Rich pictures
* Mind maps
* Context diagrams
* Use Case diagrams
* Task scenarios
* User Stories
What are hothouse workshops and what is their goal?
- Business and Dev Teams working together
- Mainly used in inoovation projects
- Typically 2-3 days
- Deliverables: Prototype solution, insight into performance metrics, processes, costs and benefits
Name advantages and disadvantages of observation
Advantages:
* Gain better understanding of problem
* Devise workable solution
Disadvantages:
* May be unnerving
* May not gain true reflection of processes
Name the different types of observation
- Formal
- Protocol Analysis
- Shadowing
- Ethnographic studies
What are advantages and disadvantages of Scenarios
Advantages
* Includes every step of the process
* Makes users consider all contigencies
* Provide basis for developing prototypes
* Provide basis for detailed test scripts
Disadvantages
* Time-consuming
* Can be become very complex
Describe the process of scenarios
- Identify task or interaction
- identify steps and sequence
- define control conditions
- identify alternate paths
What are the advantages and disadvantages of prototying
Advantages
* Clarify uncertainty
* Show users feel and look of system
* Validate system requirements and identify potential problems
* Jusge suitability of system navigation and performance
Disadvantages
* Can increase time-scale due to more change requests
* Staff can jump to premature conclusions
* User expectations may be increased
Describe the purpose of prototyping
- Elicit
- Analyse
- Demonstrate
- Validate
Name the advantages and disadvanatges of user analysis
Advantages:
* Identify common interests and requirements among stakeholders
* Efficient requirements analysis
* Useful for analysing scenarios, stakeholder perspectives, user cases, and user stories
Disadvanatges:
* Generic user role names may represent a wider stakeholder group - overcome by use of personas
