Software Engineering, Project Management, and Effectiveness
Here is an example of a simple, but surprisingly effective way to test your product success. Around patterns & practices, a few of us affectionately called this a “consumer reports” view. Whether your product is prescriptive guidance or code, the concept is the same – you’re testing your product against user scenarios.
To create a Scenario Scoreboard, simply put together a matrix of scenarios. Next, add criteria. Next, test against the scenarios and rate the criteria. Note – There are two keys to making this successful: 1) have a useful collection of scenarios, and 2) get agreement on the criteria. You want agreement on the criteria so that people can stand behind the results. Tuning your criteria can help you tune your product success. You’re basically creating a feedback loop to measure the success of your product against user scenarios.
Example of a Scenario Scoreboard What’s important in the example is the simple frame: scenarios and criteria. The scenarios are grouped into buckets.
Category
Scenarios / Tasks
Criteria
Best Practice Compliance
Implementation Complexity
Implementer Competence
Time to Implement
General
Arch / Design
Auditing and Logging
Authentication
Authorization
Caching
Configuration
Data Access
Monitoring / Health
Performance and Scalability
State
Storage
Transactions
Worker Model
Workflow
Deployment
Rating Category
Best Practice Compliance Ratings
Implementation Complexity Ratings
Quality of Documentation and Sample Code Ratings
Developer/Administrator Competence Ratings
Additional Resources
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