Scenario based design 2014 mid atlantic conference Donn DeBoard

2014 Mid-Atlantic Technical Communication Conference

Scenario-based design: Connecting content to support customer performance

Donn DeBoard 2014 Mid-Atlantic Technical Communication Conference March 22, 2014


About me Over 25 years as an award-winning technical communicator in the software and financial services industry.

Senior Information Developer, Vertex Inc., a tax technology company in Berwyn, PA.

STC Fellow. STC Community Outreach Committee (CAC).

11 years speaker at regional and international conferences.

Candidate for the STC Nominating Committee.

Copyright Donn R. DeBoard 2014 2


Who are you? Technical communicator who designs feature-based content.

User Experience (UX) practitioner who designs a customer’s overall experience.



Today’s agenda How to connect with your customers.

How stories relate to scenarios.

How to build scenarios.

Key content in your scenarios.

Exercise.

Questions and answers.



Where to start? What challenges do you face?

Where do you want to be?

How can you get there?

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What challenges do you face? Feature-based content provides product details.

Details might not include job context. Can customers connect your content to their job?

Do you know the broader business perspective?

Do you know the customer’s end-to-end experience?



Where do you want to be? Design, develop, and deliver content that supports a customer’s work-context.

Connect individual customer stories into an end-to-end story.



How can you get there? How to connect with your customers.

How stories relate to scenarios.

Build scenarios with job stories.

Key content in your scenarios.



How to connect with your customers Customers

Context

Content



Customers You are a customer advocate.

How we think our customers use our product may not be accurate.

You are not your customer.

Customer-facing SMEs are representations of your customer.

Customer research: The foundation on which to build your content.



Customers Connect with customer directly.

Align yourself with customer-facing peers.

Find a champion for making customer connections.

Customer surveys, conference calls, or on-site customer visits.

Create opportunities for yourself.



Customers How to share and apply customer research?

Persona: A fictional representation of your customer, based on research data and interviews.

Personas allow you to identify on and share customer perspective within your organization.



Context Epic stories are a global perspective of customer using your product.

An interconnected series of stories that show how customer uses your product.

Epic stories are also called end-to-end stories.



Context


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Context Epic stories show flow of connection points in how your customer uses product.

User stories provides entry point into identifying specific customer tasks.

Specific tasks help you identify the product features that customer uses.



Content Continuum of Content Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?

Aggarwal



Content Feature-based content includes What and How information.

What describes the features.

How describes procedures and processes.

Aggarwal



Content Who, Why, and When are not always in feature-based content.

Who includes user roles or community of users.

Why includes business context.

When includes customer workflow.



How stories relate to scenarios What are scenarios?

Components

Process overview for create scenarios



What are scenarios? Scenarios are related stories that focus on how customers perform tasks rather than product functions.

Describes a real world circumstance of how someone uses a product.

Rosson & Carroll



Components People.

Tasks/workflow.

Goals and Business problems.

Context or environment.

Information.

Interaction. Ames & Riley

Rosson & Carroll



Types of scenarios Daily scenarios.

Critical scenarios.

Periodic scenarios.

Exceptions scenarios.

Problem or troubleshooting scenarios.



A good scenario Identifies the customer.

Shows something meaningful the customer wants to do.

Shows why the scenario is important.

Show what success looks like when the customer completes scenario.

Shows what’s next. Parsons & MacAller



Candidates for customer-driven scenarios

Product Support records may suggest trends or re-occurring problem areas.

Customer-facing staff share anecdotal stories about problems areas.

Customer focus groups or meetings with individual customers can also show trends.



How to create scenarios .

Observe customers. Determine the epic or end-to end story.

Identify user stories. Determine the broad phases in user stories.

Identify the jobs or tasks within each user story.

Identify decision paths and solutions. Aggregate job stories into scenarios.



Building scenarios What are job stories?

How to create job stories

How job stories relate to scenarios



What are job stories? A framework for customer viewpoint, similar to user stories.

Focuses on : Customer actions for a job. Triggering event or situation. Customer motivation and goal. Intended outcome. Decision path.

Klement



What are job stories? When (Situation), I want to (Motivation and Action) So that (Expected outcome).

When I leave this session, I want to be able to create job stories so that my customer’s experience is improved.

Customer point-of-view. Provides customer context and causes.

Define motivations, not implementation.

Klement



How to create job stories Begin with epic story, if available.

Interview customers for their job stories.

Add known job context or circumstance to the situation.

Design job stories that are modular and support multiple features.

Klement



How to create job stories Jobs (situations) and solutions are independent. One job might have multiple solutions.

Add any emotional parts to motivations. Feelings or circumstances.

Supports multiple points of view. Klement



How job stories relate to scenarios The epic story is composed of interconnected user stories.

A user story is composed of related scenarios.

Scenarios include related tasks.

Job stories are lower-level granular stories .



Key content in your scenarios OVERVIEW

Overview describing business problem at a high level.

Overview of solution written for decision makers.

DETAILS

Description of business and technical challenges.

Detailed description of solution for technical audience.

Detailed explanation of solution benefits to customer.

Dennis



Exercise Let’s work though an example.



What is the business need? The Jones Group is required to manage and maintain compliance to federal and state tax regulations.

Increasing complexity in tax compliance impacts Jones’ financial bottom line.

Jones currently performs these tasks manually.

Jones is evaluating tax compliance software.



Observe customers. Observe the customers:

CFO.

IT manager.

IT professional.

Finance professional.

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Determine the epic story.



Jane Smith, Jones’ CFO As a CFO of Jones Group, I want to automate and streamline the tax compliance processes for federal and state regulations.



Mike Kelly, Jones’ IT Manager Alex Davis, Jones’ IT professional

As an IT manager, I want my systems to be efficient and support Jones’ business processes.

As an IT professional, I want to my systems to be optimized and readily available to my internal users.



Simon Barry, Jones’ Financial professional

As a finance professional, I want to reduce the time my team spends on compliance issues, including research, data entry, and generating reports.



Determine user stories Define Jones financial requirements (Jane, CFO).

Evaluate compliance software and purchase (Mike, IT Manager).

Install and administer software (Alex, IT Professional).

Manage tax compliance (Simon, Finance professional).



Identify phases within Alex’s Install and Administer user story.

Install XYZ software.

Manage network.

Manage security.

Manage users.

Troubleshoot software.



Identify jobs or tasks within Manage users story.

Assign permissions.

Create roles for XYZ software.

Assign roles to my users.

Add and delete users.



What job stories use multiple decision paths?


Job stories may have more than one decision.

Identify decision paths.

(Alex, the IT professional): When I create roles to manage permissions for XYZ software, so that I can address my user’s changing needs for XYZ software functionality.

There may be multiple ways to create roles in XYZ software.

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What solutions use specific product features?

Solutions may use more than one XYZ product feature.

(Alex, the IT professional): When I create roles to manage permissions for XYZ software, so that I can address my user’s changing needs for XYZ software functionality.

There may be multiple features to create roles in XYZ product.



Aggregate job stories into scenarios. Daily scenarios.

Critical scenarios.

Periodic scenarios.

Exception scenarios.

Troubleshooting scenarios.



Your turn Identify the epic story for your product.

Identify several user stories.

Identify job stories within one user story.

Individuals or small groups



High-level overview of business challenge

Jones, a US-based company, is increasingly involved in the global market. This involvement has many financial implications, especially around tax. The complexities involved in tax compliance are increasing.

Many processes are performed manually. The amount of financial reserve Jones maintains each year to pay its taxes has increased. Audit costs have increased. These circumstances have significantly impacted Jones’ bottom line.



High-level overview of business solution for decision makers

(Jane, Jones’ CFO and Mike, IT Manager) Tax compliance software can automate and streamline the tax compliance process. Jones wants to evaluate the best-of-class tax compliance software to see how it might address their issues.

XYZ software provides tax administration, tax compliance setup, and system administration. ABC Corporation packages the software with a subscription to the data for your tax type. ABC’s Research staff continually updates the rates and rules for jurisdictions both nationally and internationally.



Business and technical challenges (Simon, Jones’ Finance and Mike, IT Department)

Jones’ Finance department has many full-time staff researching the tax rate and rules. They are also responsible for tax planning, income tax provision and indirect tax calculation, tax compliance, audit and appeals, and business support. This work is costly in terms of time and human resources. (What is XYZ software?) (Plan for your tax compliance process).

Jones wants software that supports their business processes and IT infrastructure. Jones has offices world-wide and wants software than can be easily integrated with their ERP system (Getting started with XYZ software).



Solution details for technical audience (Alex, Jones’ IT Department)

XYZ software is a Web-based tax-compliance system that integrates with your ERP system. (How to integrate XYZ software with your ERP system). Jones IT staff installed XYZ software for Jones’ Group (Preparing to install XYZ software) (Installing XYZ software).

XYZ software is managed and administered at Jones’ group corporate headquarters. (How to perform XYZ system administration) (Manage network) (Mange XYZ security) (Mange XYZ users) (Troubleshooting XYZ software).

The integrity of Jones’ financial records requires a secure system. The goal of Jones’ IT staff is to have XYZ software available 97-100% of every business day with a 24-hour recovery time.



Solution benefit details for customers (Simon, Jones’ Finance Department)

XYZ software streamlines the tax compliance process by providing regular monthly data updates with the latest rate and rules for your tax type. (How to plan for your tax compliance process). Jones no longer requires staff dedicated to tax rate and rule research. It has automated much of the tax process for managing taxpayers. (Setting up taxpayers).



In Summary


How to connect with your customers

How stories relate to scenarios

How to build scenarios

Key content in your scenarios

Exercise

Questions and answers


Questions or comments?



Let’s connect You are welcome to contact me with questions and comments.

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ donndeboard

Twitter: @donndeboard



For more information Andrea Ames, and Alison Riley. “Strategic Information Architecture Bootcamp,” STC Summit 2013.

Aggarwal, Nivedita. “Scenarios: A new approach for documenting products,” Computer Associates, December 6, 2011.

Blout, Patty .“Adventures in Scenario-Based Documentation,” http://writetrends.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/adventures-in-scenario-based-documentation/. August 16, 2011.

Cowan, Alexander. “Existing Flatsville: Using Storyboards to Energize Your Agile User Stories,” http://alexandercowan.com/exit-flatsville-using-storyboards-energize-your-agile-user-stories/. October 28, 2013.


http://writetrends.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/adventures-in-scenario-based-documentation/









http://alexandercowan.com/exit-flatsville-using-storyboards-energize-your-agile-user-stories/


















For more information Dennis, Morgan. “Exploring Users’ Expectations and Impressions of Scenario Documentation,” Intercom. November, 2012. pp. 15-17.

Klement, Alan. “Replacing the User Story with the Job Story,” http://alanklement.blogspot.com/2013/09/replacing-user-story-with-job-story.html. September 20, 2013.

Klement, Alan. “5 Tips for Writing a Job Story,” http://alanklement.blogspot.com/2013/09/5-tips-for-writing-job-story.html. September 30, 2013.


http://alanklement.blogspot.com/2013/09/replacing-user-story-with-job-story.html











http://alanklement.blogspot.com/2013/09/5-tips-for-writing-job-story.html












For more information Parsons, Margaret. And Julie MacAller. “Developing Scenario-based Content,” Best Practices. The Center for Information-Development Management. http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/members/newsletter/Output/2012/08-August/08012012.php , August, 2012.

Rosson, Mary Beth and John M. Carroll. “Scenario-based Design,” Chapter 53 in J. Jacko & A. Sears (Eds.), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002, pp. 1032-1050.


http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/members/newsletter/Output/2012/08-August/08012012.php

