Visualization Tool – used for designing a payroll prototype solution

By Raffaella Perillo

Challenge and Selection

I work as a business analyst and technical ETL consultant. Depending on the role I have on my  assignments I either discuss about and document business requirements with the business team or even  design and implement technical solutions based on the requirements given.

On one of my recent assignments, I was working for a large EU financial company to help them switch  form a 20 yo payroll solution to a newer more flexible and user-friendly solution provided by my  company.

Discussions had started via teleconferences and some documentations was provided by the client, but  we were not closer to coming up with the best solution as their system was old (it was implemented a  long while back) and nobody knew all the rules anymore.

Application

To move things forward I decided to take advantage of my upcoming onsite visit to meet with the key  users involved in this process, sit down with them, and get to the bottom of the issue.

To make the most out of this meeting where I had the opportunity to discuss with the business face to  face, I decided to would use the Visualization tool which I’ve recently studied in this course.

I was hoping that using this tool would be the most appropriate and would make the transition between  the technical and business processes easier to follow and hopefully get us to the point where we agreed  on the new solution that best suited their current needs (and not just copy what their current system  did).

On the day of the meeting, I requested a white board. Before the meeting started, I had 15 min to  prepare which were enough for me to map out the outstanding issues about the AS IS process and be  able to start a focused conversation from there and not lose time on unnecessary details.

As discussions progressed during this discovery meeting, I used the visualization tool further by  sketching out a high-level process flow based on my understanding of their needs and requirements  which further led to creating some diagrams for the scenarios they were interested in. It was clear that  we were progressing in the right direction within the time they had allocated for this meeting.

Insight

As the clash between technical and businesspeople just discussing requirements can sometimes drag  along multiple sessions, the fact that I used the visualization tool to map and sketch out something the

client could follow had a huge impact in gaining their trust that we can implement a better solution  (prototype) for them to test.

For me it was also an achievement that during this one meeting we managed to understand and get  enough information and consensus on the proposed solution we were bringing in less time that it would  have taken by just having discussions via conference calls or going through tons of documentation.

This successful discovery session led to me sending the client a more complex diagram to cover all of the  scenarios they were interested in based on our common findings and managed to roll out an  appropriate backlog of user stories that would fit into 3-week sprint and end we us providing a  prototype for them to test.

I had learned about the effectiveness of this tool during this course recently but having had the  opportunity to use this while onsite with people I hadn’t met before and getting their approval and  consensus by the end of our meeting was empowering. I’m even more confident now to use this tool as  much as possible where the situation recommends it.

