Planning

Arrange a half-day meeting that includes the key stakeholders.

Before the meeting

1. Identify the key issues you need to explore.
2. Choose the key stakeholders based on their strategic involvement in the project.
3. Provide all participants with a copy of a list of the issues to be discussed at the meeting.
4. Develop the ground rules for the meeting, such as how to involve remote stakeholders and set limits on time for particular topics.

At the meeting

Briefly introduce all the stakeholders in the meeting. Do not assume that everyone knows each other. Briefly discuss the following topics:

• What is the overall vision of the system?
• Why is the system being developed? What are the overall objectives? How will it be judged as a success?
• Who are the intended users and what are their tasks? (Why will they use the system? What is their experience and expertise?)
• Who are the other stakeholders and how might they be impacted by the consequences of a usable or unusable system?
• What are the stakeholder and organisational requirements?
• What are the technical and environmental constraints? (What types of hardware will be used in what environments?)
• What key functionality is needed to support the user needs?
• How will the system be used? What is the overall workflow (e.g. from deciding to use the system, through operating it, to obtaining results)? What are typical scenarios of what the users can achieve?
• What are the usability goals? (e.g. How important is ease of use and ease of learning? How long should it take users to complete their tasks? Is it important to minimise user errors? What GUI style guide should be used?)
• How will users obtain assistance when they have problems or questions?
• Are there any initial design concepts?
• Is there an existing or competitor system?

Try to obtain consensus where there is uncertainty or disagreement. If information is missing, agree how this can be obtained and track who is responsible for action items and assign specific dates for the completion of those items. Avoid prolonged discussion of minor issues - keep a list of minor issues and assign someone to deal with those later.

After the meeting

Circulate a summary of the conclusions to all participants.

Participants and Other Stakeholders

Invite stakeholders who have knowledge about the business objectives, the intended users, the technology, and usage. This may include:

• Business manager
• Project manager
• User representatives
• Marketing representativives
• Developers
• Trainers
• Writers
• Support personnel

The first three are key stakeholders. You will also need a facilitator and a person to record the information provided during the meeting.

Materials Needed

The material for a stakeholder meeting include:

• Documents related to the project.
• A breakdown of the context of use.
• Large sheets of paper for group activities like brainstorming.
• Sticky notes and markers.
• Project equipment for presenting material.

Who Can Facilitate

The facilitator for this meeting can be a usability practitioner, a product manager, or other leader involved with the project. Some experience at facilitation would be valuable since there are often competing views about goals and vision at the beginning of projects.

Common Problems

Needs tight facilitation, as minor topics can absorb a lot of time. Need good tracking of action items and issues that emerge from the session.

Next Steps

Obtain any missing information. If the information is not easily available, use one of the field study methods or other data collection activity to understand users and their work environments.

Collect and agree detailed information for a context of use analysis.