Its very important to do through analysis when you are planning a website, you need to have a clear picture of how it will look, and what you need it to do for you. Missing out this step can be costly and time consuming. At Desktopability we can help with this process. Read on to discover the best way to go about analysing your needs

 

Questionnaires

Questionnaires are limited in their application, but allow the analyst to collected information from a large group of people at once, to gain preliminary information with which to develop later surveys.
Questions fall into two categories:
Closed-ended questions are useful for elucidating specific information. They are worded in order to extract short and specific answers.
They direct the respondent to answer the question in a specific way and extract data for calculation.

Open-ended questions invite the respondent to discuss a topic or give their opinion; this kind of question can be used to gather information for later investigation in a more specific form.

Questionnaires are useful for the understanding of processes, workflows or techniques.

Review of documentation

Company documents such as reports, forms, and standard operating procedures should be reviewed to gain understanding of processes and techniques in place within the existing structure. They can be used to identify rules and regulations, and help to identify redundancies and discrepancies within existing procedures.

They can be used to assist the formulation of questions for interviews and can also be of assistance during the interviews as a visual aide.
Although a good place to start the understanding process, procedures manuals can be limited if they are out of date, or poorly developed and contain errors.

Interviews and discussions

Interviews and discussions are very useful once preliminary data has been collected and a general understanding has been gained. If conducted in a manner conducive to productive interaction they can clarify and identify many issues, and are the most effective method of gaining understanding of business functions and processes.

On the down side they are time consuming and costly. Unless the analyst has prepared thoroughly the interview may not provide the information required, and tend to produce a general overview if the questions are not detailed enough.

Long discussions may evolve which can be counterproductive if more than three users are present at one time so it is preferable to interview on a one-on-one bases if possible.

Observation

Observation of business processes and workflows give a clear picture as to whether procedures are being followed and if they are effective. Though workers tend to get nervous or change their working habits when they know someone is watching them.

Walk throughs

Greater insight can be gained by walking through a process. You get a clearer understanding of its efficiency and functionality, although once again users are less likely to cut corners and use their inside knowledge of how to “beat the system” when walking through with you. Consequently if they are not encouraged to share their insight, valuable innovations could be lost.

Prototyping

Building prototypes is an excellent way to verify and validate the information gained in the analysis process, and to evolve the look and feel of the final product. Prototypes fall into two categories – Discovery Prototypes to achieve a single objective and then be discarded and Evolving Prototypes, which grow and evolve during the project and may even be used in the final system.

Joint Application Design Sessions (JAD)

Used to speed up system requirements analysis, JAD sessions provide analysis of information gathered, prototypes, policy decisions, and verification of activities. Efficient just of JAD session may shorten the timetable of the project.
Users and project team members need to come together in a quiet environment, and some enterprises don’t have suitable facilities for this to happen, so the process can be expensive if the JAD session has to be held off-site. Also decisions made in haste are not always optimal and small details can be missed, glossed over or misdefined.

Structured walk throughs

Structured walkthroughs are useful to verify and validate the initial information gathered and to clear up any queries arising from analysis

Next >