[Sigia-l] comparing personas, scenarios, uses cases, task ana lysis

[Laura Scheirer Quinn]

To my mind, when you're talking about things like scenarios and use cases, you need to define whether you're talking about current process or future system process.

I've done a lot of thinking about the "best" way to document definition and high level design stuff, and to my mind, it's really hard to solidify the "best" actual formats for things, as different needs need different things.  However, I've found it very useful to define deliverable stages-- to outline the goals that you're intending to achieve.

To my mind, personas, current process scenarios, and/or the output of current process task analysis (generally process flows, in my experience, though they could be scenarios) document what I call the "context" of the project.  This is critical stuff describing who these people are that we're supporting and what they do.  I generally do both personas and some kind of documentation (either flows or scenarios) of current process.

Then there is a to-be definition deliverable, where you represent the concept of what's to be built which supports the stuff in the context.  This is to-be scenarios, or a prototype, or (for a technical client and team, where the system ) use-cases.  I have a whole bunch of thoughts in regard to pros and cons of various formats for the to-be step (which I don't have time to elaborate on at the moment...  but I have a document I could share with anyone who wants it).  I think this step is all too often overlooked or blurred with the context step.

Laura