Chapter 7 - Understanding the Real Problem

Understanding the Real Problem

This chapter talks about how to deliver the right products. It is really important to state the problem completely so that the appropriate solution can be created focusing on how to solve it. The right product is the one that meet the user's need and to get to the right problem, abstraction is used. Abstraction is focusing on ideas rather than solutions. It means thinking about the essence of subject by discarding the technological and physical components to uncover the real intent of the work.

The Brown Cow Model: Thinking Above the line

The Brown Cow Model provides four views of the work, each of which provides the business analyst with information that is useful at different stages of the investigation. Here, we would be talking about the "What" in the Brown Cow Model.

Getting to the Essence of the Work

Working above the horizontal line of Brown Cow Model, we capture the real essence of the business. It's not about issues of people and technology, but understanding and discovering the real problem,  what the business is really doing now and what it would be doing in the future. While trawling for business requirements, the stakeholders will be providing their idea of the solutions. Therefore, a BA's task is to interpret what stakeholder is saying and uncover and separate the essence of the problem from proposed solution.

To get to it's essence, an current or future implementation should be ignored and the fundamental reason that why the work exists should be revealed. The essence exists regardless of any technological implementation. As we are looking for the essence if the business, How you implement it—now or in the future—is not part of the essence and so is not important at the moment. If the essence is ignored and we jump straight to writing a requirement that contains a technological element, then that technology becomes the requirement and as a result will be implemented. Hence, it is important to ask why a certain requirement exists, then we can get a clear and obvious answer. A Business Analyst must have this in mind that if requirement contains means of the implementation then it is a solution not a requirement.

Swim Lanes

Some BA's add swim lanes to their process models. While, sometimes it can be useful however if implementation details are unnecessarily carried further then it can mislead the readers to think that the processor boundaries they represent should be preserved for any future implementation. 

A typical process model showing swim lanes; the horizontal lines on the diagram divide the work by current departmental responsibility.

Therefore, when the swim lanes are removed from the model, it is far easier for the business analyst and the stakeholders to see that activities do not have to be carried out in the same place or in the same order in which they have traditionally been done.

The model of the same process after removing the swim lanes.

Personas

Personas are useful when real users are not available or there are numerous of them to interview. The persona is a virtual character that substitutes for the human users. The personas are suggested to used when A BA does not have access to the real users or customers. Almost always, the persona is a better representation of the user than a human proxy. These are the imaginary personalities invented of the users for whom the requirements are gathered for the product. These are derived fro market research or other surveys from the user population.

It is important to include enough personal details—including a name—to make the persona seem real. The realness of the persona gives the business analysts and stakeholders a target at which to aim their new system.

Innovation Workshops

Innovation workshops are a way of generating ideas. These are used when a large number of stakeholders are involved in the innovation process. These workshops are also appropriate when it is important for the stakeholders to see the advantages of developing a new and better way of working instead of just rebuilding the same old system. The outcome of the workshops was several hundred innovative requirements.

The workshops are a place where a BA and the stakeholders work together to innovate a better piece of work led by the Business Analyst.

Some Suggestions on planing and running an Innovation Workshop:
1. Set the scope of the innovation.
2. Partition the scope using business events to allow the participants to concentrate on the end-to-end business processes.
3. Plan the workshop using several innovation techniques.
4. Record everything that happens in the workshop.
5. Feed the results back to participants.
6. Look for the profound improvements to the workshop innovations.