Analysis for Product Design

Analysis for Product Design
Identifying Needs and Desires

Computer Science Department

bernstdh@jmu.edu

The Phases of the Process

Categorizing the Product:
- Categorize along different dimensions
Identifying Needs and Desires:
- Identify/categorize stakeholders
- Elicit their needs
Documenting the Design:
- Create the documents
- Check the documents

Categorizing Products based on Market Size

Categorizing Products based on Features

Categorizing Products based on Technological Novelty

The Challenges of Identifying Needs

The Product Type Matters:
- Consumer vs. custom
- New product vs. maintenance release
- Visionary vs. established
Problems Communicating:
- The context is often complicated
- Ambiguities of natural language
- Omitting the "obvious"
Different Stakeholders:
- People/devices who/that use the product to enter/input information
- People/devices who/that use the output of the product
- People who administer the product
- People who support the product
- Others

An Important Heuristic

Learn about the problem domain first
- You can't ask intelligent questions otherwise
Remember that needs come from goals
- Try and identify the underlying goals of the stakeholders if you can
Use well-established elicitation techniques
- Don't always "shoot from the hip"

Elicitation Techniques

Product Analysis Documents

Problem Domain Glossary:
- The terms (and their definitions) that are specific to the problem/product of interest
Organization Chart:
- A hierarchical display of the positions and reporting relationships in an organization
Stakeholder Goals List:
- A catalog of important stakeholder categories and their goals
Needs List:
- A collection of need statements, each of which documents a single product feature, function, or property desired by a stakeholder
- Each need statement must be identifiable/traceable (e.g., numbered)
- Each need statement must be associated with one or more specific stakeholders

Product Analysis in Context

In Heavyweight/Non-Incremental Software Processes:
- Product analysis documents are created, validated, and verified before resolution begins (though there is often some iteration)
In Agile/Incremental Processes:
- Few documents are created
- Analysis and resolution occur concurrently

Verification and Validation in Heavyweight Processes

Correct:
- A statement is correct if it is contingent (i.e., can be true or false) and accords with the facts
In Scope:
- Can a need be realized given the project's scope
Terminologically Consistent:
- Each word is used consistently
Uniform:
- Similar needs are expressed in similar ways
Complete:
- Contains all relevant material

There's Always More to Learn