Constructing a Business Case: why talk to users?

On my way to London on Thursday I bought a ticket for the train and noticed that it had been redesigned. I usually put the ticket for the outward journey in my right jacket pocket ready to be checked by the guard and the return ticket in my left pocket, but this time I couldn’t read the writing without putting my glasses on. After the redesign, the writing on the ticket is much smaller and fainter and it is hard to see which is the outward and which is the return portion of the ticket.

As it happened, I was going to deliver a pitch to a client for a piece of work involving writing Business Cases, and the train ticket gave me a perfect example to use.

In the initial stages of writing a Business Case we gather information about the proposed initiative including the problem to be solved, what the business goals are and the likely positions of stakeholders. Then we start to look at how the problem might be solved. This is where the imagination of the Business Analyst is set free to dream up creative solutions to the problem, as new ideas pop into their minds while washing the dishes, taking the dog for a walk or even on the verge of sleep. (Finally, they get to use the right side of their brain!)

But hold on a sec. Unless the BA already understands the thing to be delivered in intimate detail and really doesn’t need to ask anyone else, wouldn’t it be helpful to understand how it is actually going to be used by the users?

When SW Trains set about redesigning their tickets they clearly needed to consider how the tickets would be used by the passengers, but there is another set of users that is important: the ticket inspectors. If I were a ticket inspector and part of my job was to go through a busy commuter train inspecting all of the tickets before it reached the end of the line, I would want the ticket to be easy to check. As a minimum I would want to see the DESTINATION, the EXPIRY DATE and the TYPE OF TICKET at a glance from 2 metres away. And if it doesn’t make those three things clear I might have to take twice as long going through the train – or miss some invalid tickets.

As Business Analysts, it can be very tempting to stay in the comfort of the office chair, with our powerful computing tools to hand. But including User Scenarios in a Business Case – which might mean getting out of the office and talking to real users about what they need – can mean the difference between a beautiful theoretical solution and one that works.