Design thinking for IT business analysis

By Hiruni Gunaratne

As an IT business analyst how would you approach your daily pile of problems to solve?

And what kind of thinking should you use to approach the solution?

Solution-based thinking or problem-based thinking?

‘Design thinking’ is a problem solving mechanism by synthesis, which is solution focused.

A business analyst can use ‘design thinking’ to accurately understand the customers and their needs, therefore one can design a solution that discourse the need and make the customers happy at the end.

Steps to follow

Empathise – to gain a deeper understanding of the customer and the needs

Inquire customers about pain points in the scope of your product/domain and recognise what is significant to the customer. Open ended questions would advocate to elicit particulars and will let you to dig deeper.

Define – the problem to clarify scope.

Review and analyse what you learned in the empathy stage and develop a problem statement to clarity and focus to the problem. 

Problem statement sample: < Customer > needs a way to < User’s Need > because < why/Insight >

Ideate – focuses on quantity first, then quality of ideas.

Create as many ideas as you can to address the problem statement. Be radical and do not think about the feasibility.

Then narrow down the options with respect to the feasibility.

Prototype – Create the simplest thing possible and learn from that.

Build a throw-away prototype (wireframing) and start iterating with the feedback received.

Test – Show, don’t waste time telling

This should go hand in hand with the prototype iteration.

Finally, design thinking is a free way of thinking where there is no right way. So anyone can adapt and use this approach.

(The writer is a Business Analyst at Mvv Information Technology.)