Question:
The director of IT would like to know more about enthography, and suggestions on weather or not it should be used in the organization.
Response:
For starters, weather you know this term or not ethnography is a staple is business process analysis and review. Ethnography, put simply, is requirements gathering thru observation. Weather we call it ethnography, a work session, a focus group or any other number of observation techniques the key to remember is it’s an excellent tool for seeing how well a current process is working.
One of the best BA’s I ever knew could sit down and observe two or three users of a business unit, ask a few key questions and peg the main roadblocks in that groups daily work (she was quite talented). Ethnography, based on some of the material I reviewed, has a multitude of methodologies. It can vary from a very formal, almost “academic”, approach of video tapes and avoiding contact as much as possible, to an extremely light and informal working session where questions are just kept to a minimum. Really it all depends on your goal and target audience as to how far you want to go. Perhaps if you are running a study or focus group the more formal processes may provide better insight into something like a consumer level product. Contrasting that extreme, a small team working with a business unit inside an organization may want to drop by a subject’s office and have a quick working session and take some casual notes. The key to remember is it’s all about what you want out of the process.
As a recommendation, well ethnography is already in use. The process is a key asset in the toolbox of requirements gathering. Perhaps the name isn’t attached but, yes the method is already in use. That’s not to say the process couldn’t be optimized, and as such it is probably wise to review our techniques as they compare to the more structured implementations of requirements gathering thru observation.
Refrences:
- ilikecake(2008), Ethnography retrieved on February 7th 2008 from ilikecake website: http://www.ilikecake.net/hci/requirements/ethnography.htm