Have you ever been asked to find a technology solution for *flailing-arms-make-it-better*?!? Or attempted requirements gathering only to get a detailed explanation of how to do a task in the current system?
As anyone who has done requirements gathering can tell you, it’s a bit of an art form. (Yes, pun intended in the title!)
You want to meet the needs of the people who will use the solution, but it can be challenging to understand the needs of people who may not know how to articulate them in ways that translate well to technical specifications. While business process mapping is not an uncommon part of requirements analysis, it can be hard to get started if you’re new to it and hard to know how to get the necessary information.
This session I presented at the 2023 Nonprofit Technology Conference will break down ways to map workflows and get the information you need to write up effective requirements.
Struggle with the challenge of creating a great experience for your program participants or donors while balancing the needs of staff or volunteers or your organization? Trying to develop a new program, new event, new campaign, new operational capacity – and feel like you’re constantly discovering another missing piece you didn’t have in place?
Service design considers the needs of all stakeholders involved in a service or experience, how to create value both for the user and the provider, and all of the supporting infrastructure or processes needed to make that happen.
In this 30-minute talk from the 2022 Nonprofit Technology Conference, I provide an overview of service design and introduce a core method, the service blueprint, as a way to help you think through and plan what’s needed to deliver the experiences or outcomes you’re hoping to achieve for new and for existing programs.
When I was a kid, I drew all the time. On anything. (Just ask my parents to move their couch—there is still crayon on that wall behind it!) While I have no plans to become a professional artist or graphic designer, I’ve carried drawing and sketching into adulthood, and into my work.
How, you wonder?
Have you ever had a conversation with someone, perhaps multiple people in a meeting, and then realized halfway through there were actually multiple conversations going on? As in, none of you were talking about the same thing, even if you were using the same words and convinced that you were?
The best way to get everyone on the same page is to take it literally.
Drawing a picture is the best way to get everyone on the same page. The challenge of discussing things that aren’t tangible, like a process or where all our data lives, is that everyone is working off of how they think things are related in their brain. Which is not to say that each person’s version isn’t each true, but it’s hard to tell if they line up with everyone else’s or not. Without anything tangible, we often assume that everyone else has access to the same information we do and that they’re seeing the same image of the thing in their head that we are.
Putting it down on paper (or a whiteboard, or an online canvas) for everyone to see at the same time, however, allows people to see where things don’t match up, fill in some gaps, and make corrections. Most importantly, it’s a prop that helps us make sure we’re all having a conversation about the same thing and know that everyone else is looking at the same thing.
Wait, but I can’t draw!
You doth protest too much. If you can draw a box and a line, you can draw a diagram. When you’re using visual communication, it doesn’t matter how it looks as long as people understand it. You’re not creating a pretty picture; you’re creating clarity.
Interested in learning more? Here’s a talk I gave, along with Adrienne Figus and Brianna Collins, at the 2022 Nonprofit Technology Conference with on how you can draw a map to clarity:
