Visualization

Challenge    I work as a technical architect in the organization. There are numerous occasion that I need to

discuss about customer’s problem statements with internal and external stakeholders and design  solutions for them. They all come from different backgrounds, some of them are technical, some are  from accounting and others are from pure sales area. Due to various backgrounds, it is difficult to  communicate with particular jargons which may be too technical and in some places may be too layman  terms which may not capture the full complexity of the issue.

The objective of these sessions with both internal and external stakeholders is to come up with both  strategic and tactical roadmap for a product which will help them streamline their business operations.

Selection:   I have mostly used visualization as a tool in the form of a stick figure and comments icons and various  other shapes to bring the problem in visual terms in meetings and discussions on white board. While  doing the visuals on the board, my main intent is to project the current scenario and identify the pain  points that the customers are facing before arriving at any solutions.

Application:  Using boards and markers and creating a basic scenario sketch with users and their different actions and  marking things which can be automated as a process and built as a tool using technology and creating a  streamlined process for the business to follow gives a future roadmap for the product. In the workshops  we do this extensively as part of brainstorming sessions with all the stakeholders.

We create different story boards next from the preliminary visualized story of the problem and hand it  out to the developers who need to understand the requirement, design and develop the product. The  full story of the business domain which we captured in the workshop is then divided into small  independent parts and these story boards are the use-cases of the product that is envisioned in the  workshop collaboratively by all the stakeholders.

Insight  The experience of using the Visualization tool for communicating with business and defining the  problem and getting a deeper insight into the customer’s life and issues they face has helped me  tremendously. It helps the customer also to visualize themselves in that stick figure doing a chore and  understanding which part of the process is actually a pain point for them and why is it so?

So many times we have also figured a better optimized way of doing things while defining the business  process. The board and visuals allow everyone to participate and think independently and yet  collaborate together to come out with a solution.

Approach

I have started taking this approach while we were having the workshops with the external stakeholders  and it has helped us in gathering and understanding customer requirements in a collaborative manner.

The main intent is to make everyone involved in the workshop and arrive at a common ground of  understanding and from different point of view of different users/stakeholders in the system.

I would like to extend this to the technical/internal stakeholders too as this way we will give them a  visual idea about the product and the big picture on the white board in front of you will always remind  of the goal that they are working for and they can ideate and bring out anything new which would  trigger from the visuals on the board.

