JAD ( Joint
Application Development/Design :
The concept of the JAD session implies more than just
getting everyone together for a day to discuss all the issues. There is usually
a set of formal techniques that are applied to these sessions to make them as
productive as possible. JAD session is that you get all of the major decision
makers, stakeholders, and knowledge providers into one place all at the same
time. These workshops will ensure the product provides the needed reports and
information at the end. This allows the process to work more efficiently with
users in short time. JAD decreases time and costs associated with requirements
in collecting and identifying. JAD sessions help bring experts together giving
them a chance to share their views, understand views of others, and develop the
sense of project ownership.
1.
Identify
project objectives and limitations It
is vital to have clear objectives for the workshop and for the project as a
whole. The pre-workshop activities, the planning and scoping, set the
expectations of the workshop sponsors and participants. Scoping identifies the
business functions that are within the scope of the project. It also tries to
assess both the project design and implementation complexity. The political
sensitivity of the project should be assessed. Has this been tried in the past?
How many false starts were there? How many implementation failures were there?
Sizing is important. For best results, systems projects should be sized so that
a complete design - right down to screens and menus - can be designed in 8 to
10 workshop days.
2.
Identify
critical success factors It is
important to identify the critical success factors for both the development
project and the business function being studied. How will we know that the
planned changes have been effective? How will success be measured? Planning for
outcomes assessment helps to judge the effectiveness and the quality of the
implemented system over its entire operational life.
3.
Define project
deliverables In general, the deliverables from a
workshop are documentation and a design. It is important to define the form and
level of detail of the workshop documentation. What types of diagrams will be
provided? What type or form of narrative will be supplied? It is a good idea to
start using a CASE tool for diagramming support right from the start. Most of
the available tools have well to great diagramming capabilities but their
narrative support is generally weak. The narrative is best produced with your
standard word processing software.
4.
Define the
schedule of workshop activities
Workshops vary in length from one to five days. The initial workshop for a
project should not be less than three days. It takes the participants most of
the first day to get comfortable with their roles, with each other, and with
the environment. The second day is spent learning to understand each other and
developing a common language with which to communicate issues and concerns. By
the third day, everyone is working together on the problem and real
productivity is achieved. After the initial workshop, the team-building has
been done. Shorter workshops can be scheduled for subsequent phases of the
project, for instance, to verify a prototype. However, it will take the
participants from one to three hours to re-establish the team psychology of the
initial workshop.
5.
Select the
participants These are the business users, the
IS professionals, and the outside experts that will be needed for a successful
workshop. These are the true "back bones" of the meeting who will
drive the changes.
6.
Prepare the
workshop material Before the workshop, the project
manager and the facilitator perform an analysis and build a preliminary design
or straw man to focus the workshop. The workshop material consists of
documentation, worksheets, diagrams, and even props that will help the
participants understand the business function under investigation.
7.
Organize
workshop activities and exercises
The facilitator must design workshop exercises and activities to provide
interim deliverables that build towards the final output of the workshop. The
pre-workshop activities help design those workshop exercises. For example, for
a Business Area Analysis, what's in it? A decomposition diagram? A high-level
entity-relationship diagram? A normalized data model? A state transition
diagram? A dependency diagram? All of the above? None of the above? It is
important to define the level of technical diagramming that is appropriate to
the environment. The most important thing about a diagram is that it must be
understood by the users. Once the diagram choice is made, the facilitator
designs exercises into the workshop agenda to get the group to develop those
diagrams. A workshop combines exercises that are serially oriented to build on
one another, and parallel exercises, with each sub-team working on a piece of
the problem or working on the same thing for a different functional area.
High-intensity exercises led by the facilitator energize the group and direct
it towards a specific goal. Low-intensity exercises allow for detailed
discussions before decisions. The discussions can involve the total group or
teams can work out the issues and present a limited number of suggestions for
the whole group to consider. To integrate the participants, the facilitator can
match people with similar expertise from different departments. To help
participants learn from each other, the facilitator can mix the expertise. It's
up to the facilitator to mix and match the sub-team members to accomplish the
organizational, cultural, and political objectives of the workshop. A workshop
operates on both the technical level and the political level. It is the
facilitator's job to build consensus and communications, to force issues out
early in the process. There is no need to worry about the technical implementation
of a system if the underlying business issues cannot be resolved.
8.
Prepare,
inform, and educate the workshop participants
All of the participants in the workshop must be made aware of the objectives
and limitations of the project and the expected deliverables of the workshop.
Briefing of participants should take place 1 to 5 days before the workshop.
This briefing may be teleconferenced if participants are widely dispersed. The
briefing document might be called the Familiarization Guide, Briefing Guide,
Project Scope Definition, or the Management Definition Guide - or anything else
that seems appropriate. It is a document of eight to twelve pages, and it
provides a clear definition of the scope of the project for the participants.
The briefing itself lasts two to four hours. It provides the psychological
preparation everyone needs to move forward into the workshop.
9.
Coordinate
workshop logistics Workshops should be held off-site
to avoid interruptions. Projectors, screens, PCs, tables, markers, masking
tape, Post-It notes, and lots of other props should be prepared. What specific
facilities and props are needed is up to the facilitator. They can vary from
simple flip charts to electronic white boards. In any case, the layout of the
room must promote the communication and interaction of the participants.
Advantages
- JAD decreases time and costs associated with requirements elicitation process. During 2-4 weeks information not only is collected, but requirements, agreed upon by various system users, are identified. Experience with JAD allows companies to customize their systems analysis process into even more dynamic ones like Double Helix, a methodology for mission-critical work.
- JAD sessions help bring experts together giving them a chance to share their views, understand views of others, and develop the sense of project ownership.
- The methods of JAD implementation are well known, as it is "the first accelerated design technique available on the market and probably best known", and can easily be applied by any organization.
- Easy integration of CASE tools into JAD workshops improves session productivity and provides systems analysts with discussed and ready to use models.
No comments:
Post a Comment