Design
Good design can save you a fortune and a lot of headaches.
Design is the process of coming up with solutions to one or multiple business requirements.
Design always starts with understanding the business: What is the business trying to achieve and why? Next, multiple solutions will be discussed and debated. Are we able to solve the business requirement with standard functionality? Do we need to consider development?
Very simple solutions (such as adding a single new field to the customer card) can be handled verbally, but more complicated solutions must be structured in a Design Document which could include some or all of the following sections:
1) Business requirement:
What is the business requirement and why is this important to the company?
2) The proposed solution:
How do we expect the solution (or future business process) to work?
3) Development description:
If development is needed, a detailed development description needs to be written.
4) Test cases:
If the solution is particularly risky, we might need to develop structured test cases that stress test the solution before it is put into the live environment. Test cases are written in the format of, “If we do X, then we expect Y.”.
5) Go-live plan:
A plan for putting the new solution live.