JAD White PaperJAD White Paper

Requirements Gathering JAD session Project Planning JAD Session Requirements Testing JAD Session
  JAD was created to get good business requirements and this remains the most common usage today.  
 
Encourages out-of-box thinking
Enhances participant productivity
Reduces required re-work by delivering quality
Increases common understanding of results
 
  Rapid Initial Planning (RIP) sessions use JAD to create early project plans at warp speed.  
 
Provides additional level of quality control
Increases ownership of the results
Enhances participant productivity
Creates consensus among stakeholders
 
  Testing is often a lost art, at least on projects that are under deadline pressure. JAD can help here, too.  
 
Schedule is based on availability of key players
Reduces travel time, costs, and risks
Session broken into audience-specific chunks
Enables multi-tasking while ensuring participation
 

If you cannot bring us in, then consider our e-Coaching!

A JAD consists of 5 Phases:
 

Joint Application Development (JAD) enables a group of people to grasp complex issues quickly and make informed decisions.

The core component of JAD is a structured, facilitated workshop that focuses on creating specified deliverables based on the group's input.

It is an effective tool for planning a project, designing a solution, defining requirements, or any other process that requires consensus-based decision making across functional areas.

  Pre-session Planning

Evaluate the project
Create preliminary agenda
Determine deliverables for the working session
Enable participants to prepare for the session
  Pre-work

Gather information from colleagues
Clear schedules for the working session
Refine the session agenda
Finalize pre-session assignments
  Working Session

Create the deliverables
Generate common understanding
Achieve consensus on decisions
Generate ownership of results
Identify open issues and questions
Create action items
  Follow-up

Resolve open issues and questions
Follow-up on action items
Re-evaluate project
  Wrap-up

Review results of follow-up items
Evaluate the JAD process
Discuss "lessons learned"

   
 

Typical JAD's
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Business Process Modeling JAD

  
    Workflow analysts, process engineers, and subject matter experts create detailed workflow diagrams and procedures with recommended technology solutions to meet organizational goals. The deliverables can be used immediately in manual operations and may form the basis for requirement definition of automated solutions.  
 

Business Rules Definition JAD

  
    Rules analysts extract business expertise and management decisions from business specialists. Business and system analysts evaluate the identified rules to extract the impacted business processes and required business data relationships. Potential deliverables are a compilation of current or planned business rules, a business process diagram, and a business data model with key attributes and relationships.  
 

Business Data Modeling JAD

  
    Data analysts identify business data entities, relationships, and attributes with the appropriate metadata based on the expertise of business specialists. These definitions should span application boundaries and organizational units. The primary deliverable will be an entity-relationship diagram with all critical attributes assigned to entities.  
 

Requirements Gathering JAD

  
    Business analysts gather, evaluate, and prioritize the business requirements that are the basis of an automated system and serve to validate any solution. Business specialists at all levels of authority contribute expertise and guidance. The deliverable encompasses business, technological, financial, environmental, and regulatory requirements.  
 

Quick Fix Design JAD

  
    System and business specialists brainstorm, evaluate, and select approaches to solve business needs with minimal resource consumption. The potentially sub-optimal designs may serve as stopgap measures to buy the organization time to look for better solutions. The deliverable may be an action plan, a set of manual procedures, a series of change requests for automated systems, or any combination of the above.  
 

Test Planning JAD

  
    Subject matter experts, quality engineers, business / systems analysts, and the appropriate levels of management develop risk-focused test plans to evaluate the selected solution. The test plans should be available before testing activities start.  
 

How We Make a Difference!
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We offer JAD facilitation teams that have extensive experience in helping people think outside-the-box.

Our teams help your group understand and achieve consensus on the critical business requirements before design decisions are made.

We promote cross-functional sharing and foster better understanding of other people's problems and concerns.

The documented results of each activity are the building blocks the group needs to create future deliverables.

  
 
To achieve this, each team consists of two people, a facilitator
and a session analyst. Each needs specific, complimentary skills.
  
     
  Team building
  Consensus building
  Conflict resolution
  Agenda creation
  Motivation and empowerment
  Problem recognition and solving
  People focus

 

  
Request project evaluation
  "Real-time" document creation
  Business analysis techniques
  Methodology knowledge
  Expertise in the tools used
  Work under time pressure
  Quality control
  Task orientation
   
  We also offer training to help your people  
  become proficient
in doing JAD's.

For facilitation training, check out How to Prepare and Facilitate a Successful JAD Session

Session analysts can improve their skills by attending
How to Gather, Analyze, and Define Business System Requirements 		 
   
  For a free project evaluation, fill out our request form  
   
  and we will get back to you within one business day  
 
 

Example of Real-Life Project Results
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  Government rules required a client's company to provide a service to customers to conform to deregulation of the industry. The CEO initiated this service as a new project with a stipulation that the organization would comply with governmental regulations at minimal cost to the organization. The service project spanned a variety of organizational units. No one below the CEO had authority over all of these areas.  
     
 

 

 

    
  In response to the CEO's request, we set up a one-day, JAD-session qualifying meeting. The JAD facilitator (an RSG Consultant), the business project manager, the lead system analyst, two information systems managers, the data administrator, and a variety of representatives from involved business areas attended the meeting. During this meeting, our consultant led the group through a project evaluation. The group identified a set of deliverables and developed an agenda for a two-week JAD session with representation from all affected business areas. Following the assignment of preparatory work, the group scheduled the JAD session to begin in two weeks.  
     
 

 

 

    
  Twenty-seven business and system experts attended the session facilitated by the Requirements Solutions Group consultants that eventually led to the development of a solution that met the government requirements at a total cost of $1 million as opposed to the originally budgeted $13 million.
an agreed upon project scope and objective statement
a process model for each business area
a rudimentary data model of the information required to support the service
a project strategy for each individual business area that described how it would prepare for the service in terms of manual adjustments and modifications to existing automated systems
a set of problem statements with the related symptoms and potential solutions
30 major project risks
107 business requirements that would have to be met to provide the mandated service
assumptions under which the project would proceed until the assumptions were validated or proven incorrect
open issues that had to be resolved before the project could proceed
an increased sense of understanding and recognition throughout the organization for the urgency of the project
 
   
 

Examples of JAD Sessions
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Redesign the automated and manual processes and procedures to meet mandated deregulation criteria at the lowest possible cost.

  
Design a system to capture and evaluate information on clinical drug tests required by the FDA for approval of experimental pharmaceuticals.
Capture the business process and data requirements for upgrading a legacy telephone billing system to accommodate single-bill, customer-selected billing cycle, and Internet bill viewing.

 

 

Define a worldwide marketing communications strategy with cost-justified implementation plans encompassing all direct and indirect communications with sales partners.

  
Redesign the manufacturing process to integrate a quality assurance approach that will prove compliance with new inspection and reporting regulations.
Identify and schedule all hardware, software, and procedural changes needed to assure accurate and timely billing for consumer-defined local calling areas.