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Visualization

Challenge

I work for software development projects and I am in the business analyst department thus one of

my key responsibilities have always been requirement communication. My requirement cycles

cover requirements from the client to the development team and the final solution from the

development team to the client. As my organization is into the traditional waterfall methodology,

we are always required to have a requirement document (SRS) sign off before we commence

development.

This has become a major challenge as most of the time the client does not read the SRS and signs

off blindly. We, in the end have to absorb change requests later in the process in order to maintain

good client relationships and achieve more business from the client. When investigated on why

the client does not read through the SRS, it was brought to our attention that the document was too

long with too much text or complex for normal business users. Thus, we needed to find a solution

where the customer understands the solution provided in a simple manner.

Selection

We started visual aids during solution recommendation, the core solutioning team with the

business analyst used diagramming methods such as UML and process diagrams to understand the

requirements and the solution but this is not effective for a client. This was considered too complex

to be explained to our business client as we had to explain each and every notation within the

diagramming. Then we analyzed prototyping methods for visual aids for the customer, we treid

both high fidelity and low fidelity mock ups, we tested with colleagues from different teams who

did not have any prior knowledge about the project. But they seemed to understand the system

better and was even able to provide input to improve the solution further. As we tested only on one

module we understood that high fidelity mock ups utilized more resources and time which was

costly while it produced similar results to low fidelity. Therefore, we selected low fidelity to reduce

the time taken and the number of resources utilized as most waterfall projects do have a strict

deadline and a budget and if this fails it would be a cheaper option to fail with.

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Application

Initially we got the solution and the business analyst team to start drawing up screens on paper for

the requirements provided. When these were finalized and we had to search for a tool where it can

be best depicted with the flow and added to the document in a formal manner The team started

searching for various tools  from the most simplest tool such as MS Paint, MS Word, MS

PowerPoint and online tools such as Balsamiq and Mockflow. Balsamiq was clear winner due to

the simpler screens and the ability to mock a requirement journey.

But as our organization is a Microsoft partner, it was a strategic decision to use Microsoft

PowerPoint. Microsoft PowerPoint can produce wireframes via the wireframe plug in which is not

included in the basic PowerPoint package. Applying all we had on paper was an easy task after the

tool was selected. It already had the basic screen components such as labels, text boxes, containers,

dropdowns. Etc. We were able to apply everything on paper to the document within a day.

Approach

Even though we covered all the requirements to screens within the document. This did not seem

enough, to achieve validation from the customer. So, we made slides for each functionality

showing the user the mockup flow, for example “How do we add a user to the system”. We created

a set of slides where we navigate from the main menu (1 slide), to add new user information (1

screen) and to view the new user added in the user list (1 slide).

Making these flows allowed us to cover the requirements provided by the client. And provided us

with a systematic approach to present all the functionality to the client and give them a flavor of

the system to be built.

Another way of sorting this out would have been for us to control navigations by inducing a logic

in the buttons which will mimic the way the system works. Then we would have been able to let

the customer play around the system where we would have also obtained feedback based on

usability.

Insight

We tested the idea using a session with all the users of the system with our slide deck. What was

amazing is the feedback from the client, for example they would request for more fields in a screen

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or to remove additional fields. They took a step further and printed out our screens from the slides

and tested them with real data. They covered the business process which was an indication that the

system would be a success as we were able to cover all most 95% of the current manual process

through the system.

There was a difference to our previous approach we were not able to get a sign off on the first

attempt with this approach. The client request for the feedback to be incorporated in to the

document, if the scope allows or that they were willing to go for a change request as they

determined these features as crucial.

The highlight of this scenario is that we were able to identify the changes at an earlier level,

compared to identifying them later during user acceptance testing. And this approach also built

higher confidence from the client towards the organization. True this would take time, but in the

long run this was a better approach when compared to incorporating changes later in the software

development cycle which would wreck the deadline and cause cost overrun.

