I always appreciate your articles, since enterprise-scale projects have been my bread-and-butter.

I generally agree with this article, but I think that you are creating terms (or not using terms) for things that already exist (and have perfectly adequate labels). As a result, the water gets a bit muddy.

This muddiness concerns me, because working within the enterprise places a premium on communication across disciplines and organizational levels. As a result, using terms that are well-understood is critical to accelerating and achieving success.

Please bear with me here as I quote you and provide alternatives.

You wrote:

“The needs analysis then informs the creation of an overall strategy, scope and direction. From this clear framework for the IA work, a comprehensive overall roadmap of the activities required can emerge. ”

You also refer to this process as a “holistic needs analysis.”

I would call these activities “Requirements Gathering” and “Business Analysis”. These are traditional terms that are understood throughout the enterprise. Personnel with these skill sets are found in many levels of the organization, so it is easy to get a group to grok the activities you (so rightly) identified.

While I understand that there are nuances (you appear to be emphasizing the ethnographic elements of the needs analysis), I do not nees the value of applying a new label to an old task.

You also wrote:

“The strategy also identifies the most critical issues to be solved, along with the activities with the potential to deliver the greatest business benefits. In this way, the IA work can be targeted for the greatest impact.”

and

“Together, the strategy and scope define the “problem” and provide a concrete context for the user-centered design process. Along with the illumination of the practical aspects of the work to come, the strategy also builds the business case for change and creates a sense of urgency.”

I would call strategy and scope development “Product Management”. Again, this is a term well-defined within the enterprise. In this case, you did not apply a new label. I would, however, call it what it is.

While I fully recognize that there are nuances, I find that I have far greater success using generally-accepted terms for processes and roles that already exist within the enterprise.

One of my criticisms of the IA community is that we tend to make it all about us. In this sense we are pre-copernican: the universe exists around the IA.

The reality is far different: IA is a component of the greater enterprise. We need to better understand how we fit into that particular picture.

I don’t think the methodology you suggest is confined only to the enterprise space. Conducting a needs analysis and documenting strategy and scope is good practice in any project.

“Rather than support the design process, this research helps the IA understand the nature of the problem.”

Maybe I’m picking at semantic nits, but it seems to me that because a “design” in our world is a functional description of a problem-solving tool, there is very little – maybe no – difference between understanding the nature of the problem and the early stage design process.

My last comment is on your “strategy and scope” section: for anyone interested in a structured approach to negotiating strategy and scope, I HIGHLY recommend Adam Polansky’s chapter in “Usability Success Stories.” Full disclosure: I edited the book. But I’m propping Adam, not me.

I find I just keep returning to Adam’s case study for bite-sized nuggets of smartness.

I would like to mention though, that ‘needs analysis’ is successful if performed inside the organization because we have direct contact with staff and other workers within the organization. As for building external web applications or websites, where the general internet user will use the application, I find it hard to incorporate a ‘needs analysis’ approach since I don’t have direct contact with external users. Putting together a ‘Business Analysis’, ‘Project Requirements’ on the organization side of things, and a ‘User research’, ‘User tasks and goals’ on the user side on things, help identify what the ‘needs analysis’ achieves for the internal projects. Or, do you have an example on how to use this approach on external web applications?