The world of business is truly fascinating. Businesses provide livelihood to the majority of the human race. Even farmers also depend on businesses to sell their products and get inputs for farming.
However, to most of us, the world of business remains a mystery. In these series of blogs, we try to unravel the mysteries of business.
In this blog we will learn about ‘Techniques of Product Development.
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Description
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| Brainstorming | Brainstorming or idea generation is the process of obtaining ideas for new products in a non-judgmental environment, and to derive themes for further analysis from customers, sales representatives, employees, distributors, company’s research and development department etc. Many ideas are generated about the new product/service and out of these ideas, some are implemented. This is an excellent way to foster creative thinking as ideas are not judged and many ideas can be generated in a short time. However, participants must agree to avoid debating / criticizing ideas during brainstorming.
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| Affinity diagram | Affinity diagrams cluster categories and subcategories of ideas that have an affinity to each other. Affinity diagrams are useful for generating common themes when faced with number of unorganized findings.
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| Six Thinking Hats | Six thinking hats is used to look at decisions from a number of different perspectives. Each of the six hats represents a particular perspective that is adopted in turn by each of the participants. This forces participants to move out of their habitual thinking style and helps them to get a more rounded view of a situation.
Each ‘Thinking Hat’ is a different style of thinking. These are:
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| User Story | User stories are a brief textual description, typically 1 or 2 sentences, of functionality that users need from a solution to meet a business objective. User story describes actor (who uses story), goal they are trying to accomplish, and any additional information to be critical to understanding scope of story.
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| Persona | Personas are fictional characters that depicts the way a typical user interacts with a product, service, site or brand. Creating personas will help you to understand the users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.
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| Prototyping | Provides an early model of final result, widely used for product design. Details UI requirements and integrates them with other requirements such as use cases, scenarios, data, and business rules. Stakeholders often find prototyping to be a concrete means of identifying, describing and validating their interface needs. Prototypes can discover desired process flow and business rules. It allows early user interaction and feedback. Throw-away prototypes are inexpensive to quickly uncover and confirm a variety of requirements. |
| Functional Decomposition | Functional decomposition breaks down a large aspect (processes, functional areas, deliverables, scope, or problems) into smaller aspects, as independent as possible, so that work can be assigned to different groups. This reduces complexity of analysis. Provides shared understanding of complex matters and helps in estimation.
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| Workshops | Requirements workshop,known as JAD (Joint application design) session, is a highly productive focused event attended by carefully selected key stakeholders, and SMEs for a short, intensive period (typically 1 or a few days). This technique will help in obtaining detailed requirements in a short time and is a great way for stakeholders to collaborate.
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| Document Analysis | Elicit Business analysis information, by examining materials describing business environment or organizational assets. Document analysis helps in understanding context of a business need or understanding how existing solutions are implemented. Based on Business analysis information being explored, purpose, scope and topics to be researched are determined.
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| Estimation | Estimation techniques are used for better understanding of possible range of costs and efforts associated with any change. Common types of estimation are Top-down, Bottom-up, Parametric, Rough order of magnitude (RoM) / Ball park, Rolling wave, Delphi etc.
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| Risk Analysis | Identify, analyze and evaluate uncertainties that could negatively affect value, develop and manage way of dealing with risks. Can be applied at multiple levels – strategic, tactical or operational.
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| Surveys and Questionnaires | Administers a set of written questions to stakeholders and SMEs. Survey can elicit information from many people, sometimes anonymously, in a relatively short period of time. Can collect information about customers, products, work practices and attitudes. Alternatively, respondents are provided with a series of statements and asked for their level of agreement.
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| Vendor Management | Assess ability of a potential vendor to meet commitments wrt delivery and consistent provision of a product or service. Ensure that supplier is financially secure, capable of maintaining specific staffing levels, committing appropriately skilled staff to support solution, etc.
Steps for vendor assessment
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| Functional Decomposition | Functional decomposition breaks down any large aspect (processes, functional areas, deliverables, scope, or problems) into smaller aspects, as independent as possible, so that work can be assigned to different groups. This reduces complexity of analysis.
Define what to decompose, how to decompose, and how deeply to decompose. Decomposition can be applied to diverse subjects like: Level of functional decomposition defines where, why and when to stop decomposing.
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About Adaptive US
Adaptive US is world’s #1 leading IIBA EEP. It is the only training organization that provides IIBA certification training with Success Guarantee. Adaptive is a World Leader in CBAP training, IIBA ECBA training, IIBA CCBA training, , IIBA CBDA training, IIBA CCA training and IIBA AAC training.
Adaptive is a global leader in business analysis certification training with 800+ internationally certified professionals. It also conducts BA skill training on Jira, BPM, MS Visio, Balsamiq, UML, Interview Preparation as well as Resume Preparation.
Adaptive has published following books on business analysis-
- The Handbook of Business,
- 1000 BA Interview Questions,
- Business Consulting 101,
- Practical Requirements Engineering,
- Agile Business Analysis,
- Big Book Of Corporate Jargons,
- Giant Book of BA Techniques,
- Stories for Trainers,
- Practice BA Techniques with Lucidchart,
- Mastering CPRE-FL,
- CPRE-FL Question Bank,
- A Beginner’s Guide to IT Business Analysis.
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