Using 'Responsibility Driven Design' in a major client project

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Challenge

One of Oakleigh Consulting's long standing clients was embarking on a major business change transformation project. As part of this transformation project they were looking to reduce their dependency on third party agencies and to implement new mechanisms within their operational processes.

At the time Oakleigh Consulting joined the project, much of the business analysis work had been completed and, in some of the key areas, software prototypes were already being built. However, Oakleigh identified that there were a number of risks within the project, in particular:

The project had been broken down into twelve distinct areas but there was no visibility or sense of the total size of the project either in terms of resource, complexity or effort required.
Some of the areas were highly developed whilst some of the areas had no agreed scope and so understanding of the relationships between the various areas was limited.
There was no co-ordinated approach to delivery across all areas.
The challenge was to ensure that the approach taken by the project team would produce a clear design which could be costed, resourced and planned providing a significant degree of assurance to the project and senior management teams.

Solution

The recommendation by the Oakleigh consultants was to adopt a 'Responsibility Driven Design' approach to the overall design of the system. The basic concept behind the approach is that, rather than considering data as the driving force behind the design, the design is driven by an understanding of the various responsibilities that are required within the system and by their subsystems.

In order to develop the responsibility driven design for this project, all work that was currently underway was halted and a set of workshops run which were attended by the lead designers for each of the twelve previously identified areas. The rules for each of these workshops were laid down at the start:

No idea was a bad idea
Design work was to be done collaboratively using a whiteboard
Anyone could get up and draw on the whiteboard

Some of the key deliverables of these workshops were:

An understanding of the dependencies and responsibilities of each of the subsystems on each other
A categorisation of the functionality to be provided by each of the subsystems in terms of:

Must Have - Could not continue without this functionality
Should have - System would be very inefficient without this
Could have - If there is time, this will be built in to the system
Won't have - Out of scope for the current release

Documentation of the complete system in terms of the subsystems' responsibilities, dependencies and interactions with each other.

Outcome

As a result of this approach the following outcomes were achieved:

Over a period of a month the team went from no overall clear design to a well documented subsystem level design.
The scope of the project was identified, prioritised and agreed by all key stakeholders within the business.
Project interdependencies were identified enabling interface specification.
The team were able to present the results to senior management.
The team were able to back up requests for time and resource with well documented evidence.

Oakleigh consultants continued their involvement with the project through the development and delivery phase to a successful conclusion through which all external dependencies were removed thereby saving the client considerable costs in terms of support, licensing and outsourcing.

If you have any questions about the subjects covered in this white paper or you would like to find out more about how Oakleigh Consulting could help your organisation, please contact us on 0161 835 4100 or email us.

Copyright

You may publish, quote or reproduce any white papers on this website on the condition that Oakleigh Consulting Ltd is notified, properly credited (and linked to) as the source, including our URL: www.oakleigh.co.uk.

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