JAD workshops

Joint application design (JAD) is a process used in the life cycle area of the dynamic systems development method (DSDM) to collect business requirements while developing new information systems for a company.

When I started working all you did was to see the business user or the customer and gather requirements, then figure out how to translate all that information into a software solution. Few business users were implied in the whole process and this was a problem. Fortunately this has changed and now they are continually implied and the level of knowledge is much better than in the past.

Now things have changed!

I’m happy to organize this type of events, working with the technical people in the potential solutions and reading the requirements and business goals shared before the workshop.

There’s too much information to digest and to be right about what the customer expects and prepare some related content for the workshop use to be key.

Apart of all formalities (clear purpose, agenda, key stakeholders invited) it’s always good to do informal calls and understand the individual expectations for the whole process and specially for the workshop. Keeping the rest of the team informed about the informal relationships between the attendees is something good to do too.

Business requirements document

The BRD does not come alone, it comes with many other documents as UX requirements, architecture best practices and rules, etc. There’s revisions with security, which are tough ones for me.

My final purpose use to be able to build the program documents and fortunately when I have been on this process I was engaged since the beginning, and I was able to understand all the business side of the program that I was going to be leading.

This last point is very important and not everybody is always willing to engage the program manager during the business discussions.

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