I picked up a link to this MockupScreens utility from Mike Gunderloy’s daily grid blog. This software is interesting because it attempts to simulate the paper prototype look inside a structured environment.
It got me thinking about the kinds of tools that a business analyst needs. This is something that a business analyst can sit down with the user and use. But you really need to tie it into the whole development process (putting my VSTS dude hat on for a moment).
Instead of a VS Team Architect edition I sometimes wonder whether Microsoft would have been better off putting together a VS Team BA edition which a suite of designers for building different types of documents – off the top of my head I can think of:
-
A paper prototype builder/manager
-
A persona builder/manager
-
A scenario builder/manager
-
A business rule builder/manager.
With some of the process templates as they are out there at the moment many tools are just relying on fairly loose word documents to capture what could be very highly structured information.
Certainly lots of potential here.