Technology As Innovator

A limitation is not a defect

A defect is defined as non-conformance to requirements.

A limitation of a system is something a system does not accomplish, either due to technology not being supported, time constraint budget limit, or nature of business model.

Ideally, limitations should not exist in a system. However, in engineering discipline, certain limitations are accepted. This article seeks to explore ways to manage a limitation.

Scenario: a simplified example of a Customer Relationship Management System

Business domain level

An Opportunity is created from a Contact when Sales representative has approached and make a proposal to that Contact. If an Opportunity encounters difficulty, it is converted to a Lead and requires more attention. If the Opportunity is done successfully, it becomes a Contract and Price is calculated. A Lead, if done successfully, can become an Opportunity when meeting certain criteria or become a Contract. If a Lead fails, it is dismissed.

System level

The object is a Transaction. A Transaction has 3 statuses: Opportunity, Lead, or Contract.

System allows changing status of Transactions.

An issue is raised: Does the system allow changing from Contract to Opportunity? Does the system allow changing from Contract to Lead?

The impact could be huge. The system must handle Price and Invoices. This concern is accurate.

Back to Business domain level

However, back to Business level, the situation may not affect the operation at all. In reality, when a Contract is signed, it does not have to be switched back to Opportunity or Lead. The customer may not even care for this scenario.

What do we (the project development team) do to address this gap?

Widely accepted principles of system development and project management

To address the issue, let’s get back to principles of project management

• The system should be able to satisfy customer requirements.
• The system should be able to handle exceptional cases.
• The system should be within budget and time frame with given resources.
• 80/20 rule applies. In certain cases, 80% efforts are spent for functions that users use only 20% the time.

How different roles view a limitation

A natural engineering approach of this gap is to restrict changing status of a Transaction from Contract to Opportunity.

However, when the proposal is put on the table, the chance maybe that it is not accepted. Firstly, the client doesn’t want a restriction in the system. Next, the client doesn’t want the development team to spend much efforts and time on a functionality that will not be used frequently.

This leaves a limitation in the system: it still allows converting Transaction status from Contract to Opportunity or Lead, but it won’t fix the Price and Invoice. This limitation leaves it to the hand of user to manage data themselves.

Manage a limitation from different perspectives

• System Analyst: this limitation is put in Supplementary Information section in a document.
• Technical Writer: this limitation is noted in User Manual.
• Business Consultant: communicate with client on this issue.
• If any issue arises, it is to be escalated to the Project Manager.

The Dilemma

When designing screens for enterprise systems, I frequently face an issue. There are too many fields to present for a user to complete an action (i.e. manage an order transaction). In terms of cohesion, since these fields serve one purpose, they should be put in one screen. But again, too many!

Too many of them clustering in one screen makes it look like a mess with texts, numbers and boxes. Not nice at all!

New design trends pushes this even further

The new design standard introduces alternating colored grids, text boxes with strong borders. All of these increase to size of elements, thus will make the screen narrower.

So we face a dilemma: should we put all relating fields in one screen, or break an action into multiple screens?

Put all in one screen
or
Break the information into multiple screens?

What’s your Focus?

There are a couple of things you can do:

• Review GUI Design Guidelines
• Review a high level document (i.e. Vision) to determine what the system is for and what it should look like in general
• Create different prototypes and propose them to the customers

The most important factors

Some factors to look into when composing your own solutions:

Number of clicks

Because user’s interaction with system is done chiefly through mouse motions, number of clicks is considered one of the most important factor of GUI design.

Most of the cases, my experience is that with a little twist in design, number of clicks can be reduced from 3 to 2. Not so frequently it can be cut down dramatically. 1 click seems trivial. However, a user may perform that action a thousand times per day, thus makes it worth the effort.

Efforts users have to spend to learn how to use the system

If a screen has too many fields, it would be confusing for first-time users to know how to locate information.

If it takes quite some screens to accomplish a task, it would be confusing for first-time users.

In the long run, the first solution would prove to be better when user has memorized the location of information sections.

So great! We have the chance to meet, work with and learn from a lot of interesting and talented people.

The job of a Business/System Analyst is so fascinating and challenging. I am not, at all, surprised to see the growing interest in this position.