Goals and User Journeys - the only brief worth reading?
During the daily battle to keep on top of my my inbox I received a perfectly valid request from a new member of the client's marketing team that I thought worth of sharing to garner other people's thoughts (how would you have handled this differently?)
"I am working on a new website brief and we wondered whether there was a Drupal module that we could add for a blog?"
I can only but imagine the immediate thoughts that this would spark or groans this might induce. To me this was an opportunity to reinforce some of i-KOS' collective wisdom......
------ my reply ------
As the Drupalists like to say 'there's a module for that'. In fact if you look at Drupal.org you will see there are over 14,000 modules - yikes! However in practice we nearly always utilise and configure one or more module (we sometimes refer to as a Features or Feature-set) to deliver the desired and best result.
HOWEVER if I maybe so forward I'd like to share a method of briefing which, in our humble opinion, is where the overall goal and individual goals for each task is expressed and done so via user-stories. This method, we find, helps the authoring process as it makes you consider the different users.
A simplified examples might be:
Overall goal: We would like a blog to allow for editorial that is neither official news, events or product information. The driver of this request is to help us publish more regular content and thus assist us in terms of SEO.
User goals:
As the Site Administrator:
- I would like to be able to create a new blog post which allows me to create a title, bylines, sub headings and body copy using a simple WYSIWYG editor.
- I will need to add links to other sources
- Upload images and ideally be able to perform a basic crop
- Associate a .pdf document although not mandatory
- Classify the post by way of a pre-determined classification
- Tag the post using free-form text
- Moderate comments prior to publishing, edit them if required, have the rights to delete or publish them
- etc.
As a site visitor:
- I would like to be able to share a blog post to my twitter followers or facebook friends
- Post comments; I would like to be able to post comments.
- I don't mind logging-in but I'd prefer to use my twitter or facebook credentials
- etc
Development of new features for a website used to be wholly dependent upon the technology or rather the limitations of the technology. Whereas we are heading towards a time when we can, within the confines of time and budget, deliver what is actually wanted to meet the project goals. The time and budget is therefore the cornerstone of what we might set out to achieve; meaning we may still in fact revert to what a particular module or modules can do to meet the goals.
Myles
