- Generally understanding your current landscape
is important,
but the most important part
is defining where the gaps and pain points lie.
This brings us to the importance
of doing your homework around requirements gathering.
This is a crucial step in any project
that intends to succeed
because it will start defining your desired solution
and give you something concrete to work towards.
Every business is going to be a little different,
but I think we can safely say
that there will be two main classes of people
you need to work with as you start gathering your research.
We can think of the first group as consumers.
These are the people who are the end users of your system,
whatever it is.
They may be business people
who are looking to extract information from your system
to help them make decisions.
Or they may be customers who are using your system
to purchase or otherwise obtain something.
Or they could be both.
Whatever the case,
you need to be talking to these people
to find out what they like and don't like
about the system now.
What's easy to use, what's not?
What do they wish they could do
that they can't do now?
What can they do now that they don't value?
Gather your information from feedback forms,
help tickets, forums, surveys,
focus groups, as many different channels as you can.
Don't forget to check out informal networks
like chat groups or social media if they exist.
These are important sources
of unfiltered and unbiased information.
The second class of people you need to work with
are the users,
the ones who are working with the system every day
to help meet the needs of the consumers.
Now I would argue that these folks
are even more important than the consumers,
although they are unfortunately all too often neglected
during requirements gathering.
The users are the ones
who know exactly where the system is flawed
because they knock their heads against it every day.
You need to be talking to them,
finding out their pain points
and listening very closely for suggestions.
Many times, needed improvements
aren't even technical issues.
They're matters of tweaking the process
so that it works with the existing tools.
If that's the case, you can fix it fast
and move on to concentrating your energies
on something else.
But you will never know
if you don't ask and listen.