Analysis and Design

Why would I be talking about Analysis and Design?

For one, it's what I need to do for Project X. The other reason, it's because it is something I do on a daily basis in my day job. Simon and I work for a software company. He's involved with software development and has been doing this for 10 years. I on the other hand, belong in the product management team whereby I need to analyze a client's needs, create a specification document for the requirements (so that the new software changes can be developed correctly), test and document the new changes. And lastly, there's no point in creating all these lovely new functionalities if no one understands it or knows about it, so I'm also involved with creating the training materials or perform face to face training, in order to impart knowledge of the new changes to other people. I've been involved in this area for 6 years.

Both our skills set creates a nice balance and it's probably why we enjoy hearing about new and innovative ideas :)

Because of our day jobs, it's not that we don't want to post content more regularly on our website, it's just that we are so busy trying to juggle this and life in general it gets a bit hard. On top of this, we are about to release a new version of the software we are working on, so double the stress level! But I don't want to dwell on these things, I just wanted to give those that read our posts a bit of perspective of where we come from.

Therefore, if you need something new to be developed you can do the following things:

1. Document your business process: First document your current business processes or what you currently do in your business. Be as detailed as you can. You can even use diagrams to describe how things currently work. You can create diagrams just using microsoft word. You are the best person to do this, as you know how your business works. If you don't have the time, then give this to someone else to do who is also involved with the day to day dealings of your business/company.

2. Identify Requirements: Next sit down and look at what you need to improve on. If you are using an existing system, ask yourself whether the vendor of this system can meet your new needs? If not, it might be time to look at a new system. Just make sure the new system can meet your business needs or the vendor is flexible enough to make some changes in the software to meet your requirements.

At this stage, I will always explain to clients to identify business critical requirements first. These are items that impact your day to day business that may affect eg: cashflows, staffing levels, execution of services, etc.
You need to be realistic with what can be achieved with the time frames you have set out. There is no point asking for lots of new things that are not business critical and they take up a lot of time, money and resourcing. So be realistic of what your needs are and be aware of the cost and time that it will take to achieve these things. But certainly identify your priorities, create a list with a set priority level against each item (for example: priority 1 are business critical, priority 2 are important but can wait, priority 3 are 'nice to have' for the future, etc.). In this way, you can coherently see the items that require to be actioned first and then you can work down your list.

For Project X for example, Simon and I have identified 2 crucial parts of the project that we need. Simon will be developing one component of our project, but we have decided to outsource the other part of the project as we just do not have the time to develop this section. Being able to recognize what we can and cannot achieve based on the time frames we have set out is really important. This means that we are realistic of aspects of the project that we can achieve (from our end) and finding other avenues (such as outsourcing) to ensure that other parts of the project can also be completed.

We have also documented our requirements so that we were able to identify the items that were critical for this project in order to proceed.

3. Specification Document: If a change is required to an existing system, this document is what I generally have to create. Before this can take place, our team would already have done some research, discussions and have come to an agreement that introducing this new change will benefit the core system and other clients currently using our software.

The specification document will outline the change required and detailed information of how this change will be achieved. Plus lots of diagrams to visually describe the change needed. Generally it will contain things such as rules to follow, validations the system needs to make, new screens to be created, etc...

For our project we have sent out a specification document to the developer, so that he can clearly see an outline of our requirements and the expected end results we would like developed.

4. Design: In my day job, when we are designing a completely new screen, I need to define how this new screen will be accessed, the fields required, what each field is referenced to do, layout and design of the screen.

The design of a new screen will depend generally with the standards a particular company decides to utilize. We follow a very specific sets of standards of how a screen needs to be designed so that it fits nicely with the entire system.

This is so that the end users continue to remain familiar with the look and feel of the system that they have been using. It's a bit like, if all the doors in your house are rectangular in shape, the door handle is placed on the middle right hand corner and painted in white (and this is what you are used to using). When you need a new door, you would not want to order a new circular shaped door, with the door handle located on the top left section and in bright green colour (unless of course this is something you really need!). It's all about usability and familiarity.

For our current project, we have worked on some of the design aspects but it is still at a draft stage. It's satisfying to see it slowly coming together. And it has been a slow process, but I know we will get there :)

Thanks for taking this journey with us, see you again soon for another update...