- Article - Software Best Practices
The analysis stage serves as the bedrock of technology projects, providing the necessary groundwork for successful outcomes.
It’s important to align all stakeholders around a project’s objectives. A broad analysis phase will ensure the problem is well understood, and help create an agreed upon vision.
By embracing a limited time window to avoid analysis paralysis, and prioritising the tools and artefacts listed below, organisations can gain a deeper understanding of project requirements, mitigate risks, foster stakeholder collaboration, and lay the foundation for efficient and effective development.
Aligning Stakeholders
Executive-led discussions around purpose and business objectives to crystallise thinking and draw out initial tactical ideas.
Organisational Chart
An org map plots all the people, stakeholders and roles within the business.
Shared Understanding
Create an overall map of the special business context, including goals, human and system actors and general processes.
Design Sprints
Leverage a diversity of perspectives through a structured but rapid series of workshops and activities to problem-solve and validate solutions together.
Test and Validate
Define distilled profiles for the different user roles and potential variety in them.
User Journeys
Create a user journey map for each meaningful persona defined, including system touch points and business rules.
Prototypes
Sketch low-fidelity, or high-fidelity mockups and stitch them together as an interactive prototype to solicit feedback from a more tangible product at low effort and cost.
Technical Feasibility
Illustrate the general logical and technical composition of components in the software solution.
Data Models
Construct a diagram and a list of data inputs and outputs to build a concise well-understood foundation for handling data.
Process Models
Develop flow diagrams of business and system processes that are critical to the solution.
Way Forward
Every project and greater technology team must have a consistent, reliable framework in place for how work flows between people and teams.
Flight Plan
Create a high-level flight plan that structures milestone deliverables over the course of the project.
Conclusion
Just like a well-thought-out blueprint paves the way for a structurally sound building, a comprehensive analysis lays the groundwork for efficient and effective software development. These tools help serve as the compass that guides the entire project, ensuring that the end product aligns with the desired outcomes and expectations.
Discover more practices that impact technology project success
Sharing Entelect’s experience in industry, these are our own lessons for the major factors which influence project success through the lenses of user adoption, time and budget.