Harmonizing Business Analysis and Design
Leveraging the Designer Role
What turns good solutions into great solutions? Design plays a significant role in thinking through the best way to fulfill requirements. User experience designers work closely with users to understand what will make a solution work for them, similar to business analysts working with stakeholders to develop requirements.
A 2022 Salesforce Business Analyst Summit session explored how designers and business analysts succeed by working closely together. Designers Katka Vokrinkova and Kirstie Wilson from Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) presented Leveraging an Adjacent Role of a Salesforce Designer. Katka also plays a business analyst role. They showed how designers and business analysts mesh for success in their design process. They concluded with strategies to turn good solutions into great ones.
The Designer and Business Analyst Duo
Kristie cited a Salesforce research study stating that 87% of companies prioritize customer experience, transcending customer satisfaction. She pointed out that depends on how well the project team aligns with business objectives. Designers and business analysts should lead stakeholder alignment to ensure the solution fulfills its objectives.
The business analyst and designer work hand-in-hand to understand the business needs. The designer meets with users to determine what they need to improve their work. The business analyst collaborates with stakeholders to create requirements. The designer and business analyst meet with the development team to determine feasible solutions. Together, they create a compelling user experience to meet their organization’s objectives.
The Four D’s of Design
Kirstie introduced their design process, split into four stages:
Discover business and user needs
Define the strategic vision, scope, and requirements
Design prototypes and write user stories
Deliver an integrated, tested solution
The Discover and Define stages determine what the organization needs, ensuring the project team will “solve the right problem[s].”
The Design and Deliver stages fulfill those needs with an appealing user experience to “solve the problem[s] right.”
Harmonizing the Design Process
The designer and business analyst work in concert through each stage of the design process:
| Stage | Designer performs | Business Analyst performs |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | User research Journey mapping | Organization research Process mapping |
| Define | Strategic visioning Challenge framing & scoping | Curate needs into requirements Requirements recording |
| Design | Prototyping Iterative improvement | User story creation Collaboration to tackle challenges |
| Deliver | Design artifact integration Monitoring to assess performance | Solution validation User acceptance testing |
Business analysts focus on business needs which inform designers’ research into user needs. Designers connect user needs to the organization's goals with a strategic vision. Kirstie pointed out that some designers take on strategy and user experience while others focus only on one of those aspects.
As designers research user needs, connect them to strategies and map user journeys, they note challenges that arise and put each one within a manageable scope. Designers collaborate with business analysts to resolve the challenges in the Design stage.
User experience design depends on mocking up prototypes to get user feedback. Designers incorporate the input into revised prototypes until the experience meets the users’ needs.
Once the users confirm that the experience meets their needs, the designer integrates the user experience into the solution. The business analyst validates the solution, ensuring it meets the organization’s needs, then turns it over to selected users for acceptance testing. The designer monitors the integrated user experience to ensure that it performs as expected - or better.
Elevating Good to Great
Katka and Kirstie presented four key elevation strategies to turn good work into great work:
Alignment - Design for buy-in across your team and an ecosystem.
Sustainability - Design for positive contribution to society and the environment.
Relationships - Design for social constructs and ecosystems, not just individuals.
Ethics - Design for ethical values and create accountability.
Great work depends on stakeholders aligning with the business goals and project objectives. For example, Salesforce aligns its people around its V2MOM management process:
Vision - Defines what you want to do or achieve.
Values - Principles and beliefs that help you pursue the vision.
Methods - Actions and steps to take to get the job done.
Obstacles - The challenges, problems, and issues to overcome to achieve the vision.
Measures - Measurable results you aim to achieve.
Salesforce’s vision and values go beyond delivering value to their customers to creating an ecosystem bringing positive changes to the world.
The Grand Finale
Katka and Kirstie distinguished the designer and business analyst roles, then showed how they harmonize to determine and fulfill the organization’s needs up to the strategic level. Their process goes beyond design - it maps user journeys and processes, motivating users with experiences to achieve business goals. They went even further with team alignment, sustainable, and ethical design and group relationships beyond the organization.
Katka and Kirstie ended their presentation with three takeaways:
Everything you create using Salesforce is designed in one way or another; the key is to work with intention and design in mind. BAs and Designers should work closely together.
To create the right capability to design with intention, add a Salesforce Designer to your project team!
Or upskill in good design methodologies yourself - by getting certified and using the new Relationship Design toolkit.
Every software project needs design, from the business strategy to each user’s experience.
Incorporating thoughtful design from discovery through delivery can make good solutions great.
References
The presentation Leveraging an Adjacent Role of a Salesforce Designer is available with a subscription to the Salesforce Business Analyst Virtual Summit.
The presentation encourages use of the Salesforce Relationship Design toolkit.
Links to Trailhead content relevant to elevation strategies:
Alignment
Sustainability
Relationships
Ethics