Chapter 7 Understanding the right Problem

Chapter 7 Understanding the right Problem

Question 1. What the brown cow model does?

Answer The brown cow model is all about the number of ways (viewpoints) in which we can look at the work area, when we are investigating work area. In brown cow model there are four quadrants namely- How Now, What Now, Future what, How Future.

 How Now is the place to start in most of the times and it shows the implementation of the work as it currently exists. Which includes physical artifacts, people that are used to do the work.  What Now shows the real business policy or the essence of the work. Future What shows the business as your owner want to have it in the future but still with technical neutrality that being used to implement that business. Future How shows the future business policy with the use of technology that being used to implement it.

Question 2.  What are persons and how it is useful?

Answer Personas are the fictional and imaginary characters which you can create on the basis of your knowledge and used to represent a group of people. It is quite useful to know the end user of the product or service. Although we conduct interviews and do surveys to know the reactions of the end user of the product what when there are multiple end users involved and multiple stakeholders involved in the project who are not readily available for an interview then we can use personas.

Question 3.  How innovation is important while designing products and what ways can we used to bring it?

Answer Innovation is a way to improve the company’s previous products and services and the BA must want some improvement in the client’s work and it can be brought through innovation. It is quite important to be innovative while designing the products and services because if there is no innovation the product and the service would be the pretty much same as previous. There are lot of ways and techniques to bring innovation. The following are some ways to collect innovative ideas.

Innovation workshop: - It is one of the best ways to bring innovation as it allows all the stakeholders to set together and generate ideas and express their views in a systematic way. This approach is useful when there are multiple stakeholders involved in the project. By setting together with stakeholders the BA can discuss the current and past situations and also take their views regrading project. The BA often documents the results come from the stakeholders.

Brainstorming: - It is quite helpful to generate ideas and helpful to make improvements in the previous products and services. In the brainstorming session the BA must allow everyone to give their views.

Question 4.  In the brown cow model from which quadrant the BA often start their work and why BA should focus on What future before Future How?

Answer There are four quadrants in the brown cow model: - How Now, What Now, Future what, How Future. The BA often start from the bottom left quadrant that is How Now as it depicts the current implementation of the work and before determining the future business policy it is quite important to look at the current situation of the work. Apart from this, The BA should focus on Future What first then emphasis on Future How because it is essential to understand and analyze the problem first before we can start considering any alternatives for that problem.

Question 5.  How should the BA can handle the current organizational division of the work?

Answer It is a responsibility of a business analyst to manage the organizational fragmentation of the work. The business analyst should use models with swim lanes to visualize and analyze what is going on simultaneously by departments and in order to see the end to end business BA can also take away the swim lanes and business analyst should not have any restrictions to see across different departments and organizational units.