[Sigia-l] Enterprise IA

[Listera]

John mentioned:

> link between the design and the developers...

In larger enterprise projects just where should/does the IA fit in?

IA --> Design --> Dev
IA/Design --> Dev
Design --> IA/Dev
Design --> IA --> Dev
IA/Design --> IA/Dev

In my prototype-centric world the Dev team should be essentially
constructing what's (functionally) indicated by the prototype, in much the
same way a general contractor builds with an architect's blueprints.

This is the most efficient way but with one crucial requirement: that the
IA/Design team (IA, project manager, business analyst, UI designer, etc)
understand the fundamentals of app design (at least) to the extent that they
won't spec/prototype something too costly, too time-consuming, too hard to
maintain, etc.

In a period where an incredible percentage of technical jobs are migrating
to India, Russia, China, etc., it's more reasonable to expect IA/Design
teams to gain better understanding of app development fundamentals than (for
the immediate future) to expect the overseas development team to understand
and impact design fundamentals. IAs, in the West, won't be embedded in the
dev teams for long. (For years, for example, animated movies have been
designed and architected in Hollywood and inked and produced in the Far
East, notably in South Korea.) In the long, of course, this will even out.

So, going forward, it becomes even more crucial to produce a functional
prototype than to hand over to the dev team (that may be continents away) a
thick pile of docs, charts, use-cases, etc., which they would have to
reconstitute and interpret into code.

It all comes to: show'em how it works.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba