Poster download: Over-all product flow

You can write books and books about all the artifacts your project members are supposed to produce. And there are thousands of them out there. Such a document could be even another product of your project. But -hand on heart- will anyone care? I thought it might be better designing a poster. It shows the product flow on a high level. According to the feedback I got so far from the business users they like it. It helps them to understand the meaning of their contribution in terms of the big picture. OK, that was my intention.

UX BA Poster DinA3

.pdf

Download PDF • 1.19MB

This process refers to my current project. But I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t transfer it to any other project.

The project starts with gathering the high-level business processes and creating overviews. Those process overviews may become quite impressing (meaning: huge). As I personally find them a little bit too hard to handle I rather transmit them into BPMN diagrams. The BPMN is much more compact and easier to read. Both products will be developed by business analysts.

On that basis we now sit together again developing task sheet. Normally you create them as Excel sheet (or Numbers or Calc…). But I suggest to start writing them on paper. This has the advantage that everyone has direct access to it while you discuss it. If you start directly on your computer only one has direct access while the other team members stay around without the chance to do much about it. Meaning, they are not involved as they are when working on paper. And involvement means good ideas!

Start developing task sheet on paper. It’s easier to catch your colleagues’ ideas.

As you can see from the poster task sheet play a central role in this process. After we have created them the flow splits up into a business analysis branch and the UX branch. Although task sheet are a typical UX tool they are very valuable for business analysts. I use to derive business and information objects from the task sheet, which build up the domain model. In a task sheet you also wonder what functionality you need to fulfill the task. Guess what? That is very important input for the use case model. Amongst other models domain and use case model flow into in enterprise architecture. Surely this branch is in charge of business analysts.

But task sheet wouldn’t come out of UX toolbox if there was no benefit to UX professionals. We develop user requirements from them. And those will serve together with task sheet as a basis for wire frames and prototypes.

As you can tell this is a simplified presentation of a project’s artifacts. And it is likely to consider more products  for an IT project (e.g. story boards). But basically, the flow stays the same.

Do you do things in a similar way?