Sep 16, 2016 9:39:57 AM by John Weathington
How do you think companies feel about returned merchandise or a cancellation?
I worked with PayPal for a period of time to help them decrease churn (their equivalent of a service cancellation). Trust me, it's not something they want to get out of control.
As a business analyst, your version of a return, a cancellation, or churn is end users who don't use the data solution that you and your team just spent months building for them. You go through the process of documenting requirements, translating them into something the developers can build, securing the right infrastructure, building and testing the solution, and then finally deploying it into production. And then when you check your usage statistics, you find they're not using it at all.
That, my friends, is bad news for you.
So, how do we avoid this situation? Well, you can start by making sure you do a good job of collecting and documenting requirements. However, the biggest opportunities are lost in User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Here are my six key strategies for a successful UAT.
Building data solutions that aren't used is a waste of time and an indirect attack on your value as a business analyst. To prevent this from happening make sure you knock it out of the park with your UAT. I've shown you six key strategies for success--employ all of them. Even if the solution isn't perfect (even though you delivered what they asked for), you'll at least have the opportunity make it useable and collect valuable feedback for the next version. The last thing you need is users who cancel your service--so don't let it happen.
Tags: Toad Intelligence Central Design Analysis
Written by John Weathington
John Weathington is President and CEO of Excellent Management Systems, Inc., a management consultancy that helps guide organizations to achieve strategic goals, improve critical processes, and leverage the power of information. For over 20 years, John has helped clients of all sizes including an impressive list of Fortune 100 firms to include Visa, PayPal (eBay), Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Hitachi Data Systems, Cisco, and Silicon Graphics. His unique blend of leadership, management, and technical talent and skills are a rare find in the consulting arena.
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