Defining Vision

This is sort of a follow up to the comments on the Springboard Twist post. I said that before we take the next steps in applying Deductive Business Logic (that is, in mapping Business Value to the Specific things you should implement in a software project) you ought to make sure you’ve take the first step. At Springboard, we believe the first step is to help our clients articulate their vision of what constitutes the Business Value for a given project.

Of course, that begs the question: What are the tangible components to a statement of the vision of a software project?

I think it’s just three things:

1. Identify who the stakeholders are: Find out who’s paying for the project, and who has final authority for approving the work produced during the project’s life. The stakeholders are not only paying the bills, they are the people who have the most to gain or lose from the success or falure of the project.
2. Identify what the stakeholders percieve as the business needs for the project. This might be one or more busines problems that they face, or opportunities that they want to take advantage of. You should be ready to help them think about how to articulate their business needs, and there are a number of techniques you can use, including interviews and surveys, brainstorming, workshops, and even role playing.
3. Identify the features of the proposed system that would meet these needs. The notion of a feature at this point is not the same as a software requirement. Think of features as services that the system will provide - and in this context - these are services that the business stakeholders and the development team both think will meet the business needs we identified earlier.

Once you have identified these three things, you will defined most (if not all) of the “Business Value” box in our Deductive Business Logic model. The next steps? I suppose that’s going to have to wait for another post.