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
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.
Copyright Donn R. DeBoard 2014 3

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?

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?
6

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?
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

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

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

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

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

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.
35Copyright Donn R. DeBoard 2014

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.
43

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
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: donn.deboard@vertexinc.com
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.

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.

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.

Scenario based design 2014 mid atlantic conference Donn DeBoard

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