Joint Application Design: From Basics to Business

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Joint Application DesignFrom Basics to Business

• By
• Lisa Cox Brad Tingquist Cory Zwick

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J A Dthe basics
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Where did JAD come from?

• IBM
• Late 1970s
• Designed to draw users and IS professionals
  together to design systems in facilitated group
  sessions
• Structured group session approach to making
  decisions

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What is JAD?

• Technique that allows users, designers, and
  managers to work together to map out an
  Information System

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Five phases of JAD

• Phase 1  JAD Project Definition
• Phase 2  Research
• Phase 3  Preparation
• Phase 4  The Session
• Phase 5  The Final Documents

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JAD Participants

• Sponsor
• Facilitator
• End Users
• Managers
• Scribe
• IS Staff

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Management Definition Guide

• Defines what management wants from the project
• MDG contains the following areas
• Purpose
• Scope
• Objective 
• Assumptions 
• JAD members names

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Phase 4
Tony Thai
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JAD Session
What Must be done?

• Discuss Assumptions
• Define Data Requirement
• Design Business Processes
• Design Screens
• Design Reports
• Resolve Open Issues

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The Final Document

• Accumulates all reports generated in JAD process
• Must answer the question
• How can the business process be automated?
• If all goes well
• Approval

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Why JAD Works

• Users who do the job have the best understanding
  of that job.
• Developers have the best understanding of how the
  technology works.
• Business process and the software development
  process work the same basic way.
• The best software comes out of a process that all
  groups work as equals and as one team with a
  single goal that all agree on.

Tony Thai
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Things that make JAD go bad

• People are not up-front or have hidden agendas
• Slow communication and long feedback time
• Weak or no support from upper management
• Bad documentation

Tony Thai
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Tips from JAD experts

• Lighten the load
• Table delicate issues
• Get it in writing
• Do it together

Tony Thai
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JAD
Business Implementation
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Business Cases

• Service First Bank
• CA One Services
• Utell International
• AJC International

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Service First Bank

• Generic Case Example built by Robert B. Jackson
  and David W. Embley.
• Traditional approach to design included
• Little user involvement
• Large responsibility for the development team

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The Scenario

• The Service First Bank is a locally owned bank
  that services a small community in the mid-west
• Provides basic services including savings
  accounts, checking accounts, credit card accounts
  and loan accounts
• Every customer must have a checking account in
  order to have a credit or loan account.
  Accounts may be jointly owned, and a customer may
  have multiple accounts

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Project Goal

• Using JAD . . .
• Produce higher quality software, faster, while
  delegating responsibility to both users and
  analysts
• The Service First Methodology. . .
• Development of an analysis model (OSA), a
  specification language, and accompanying tools

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Utilizing JAD

• Typical JAD sessions lasted for two hours in the
  morning
• Then..
• OSA modeling began
• Model instances were input into IPOST
• Prototypes were inspected for weaknesses
• This goes on until later in the day when team
  members may be ready to transform the model
  instance into a specification.

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Results

• Normal prototyping hinders JAD by breaking up
  sessions
• Using OSA allowed prototyping to happen alongside
  JAD sessions, so information could be constantly
  presented.
• Using CASE tools and a formal analysis model, is
  a natural, Real-world way to model systems

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CA One Services

• Operator of more than 200 food and beverage and
  retail shops in some of the nations largest
  airports.
• Locations Include
• Newark, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver and New
  Orleans

www.ca1-airportrestaurants.com
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Project Goal

• Develop a data warehouse of for operations at a
  high volume Terminal at Newark International
• Avoid layering new technology over old processes

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Newark Facility

• Operate a combination of licensed and proprietary
  concepts.
• Au Bon Pain, Nathins Famous, Sbarro, Miami Subs
  Grill, Americos Pizza, and Jakes Coffee House.
• Roughly 14 million dollars in sales.

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Utilizing JAD

• The company decided to incorporate a JAD session.
• Opted to enlist the help of IBM to facilitate JAD
  sessions
• The meetings included unit managers, general
  managers, regional analysts, and corporate
  staffers

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Utilizing JAD (cont.)

• Examined all existing business processes and
  determined which were strategic enough to drive
  the business
• Defined the technological requirements for the
  data warehouse.

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Results

• Five parameters
• Revenues
• Product costs
• Payroll
• Inventories and purchases
• And Management Information Reporting
• Through analysis of this data, the company has
  been able to answer complicated questions and
  prepare for the future.

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Utell International

• Hotel industry's largest third-party marketing
  and reservations provider
• Utell has 45 offices servicing hotels in more
  than 1600 countries
• Equating to 1.3 million rooms at about 6.3
  million hotels around the world
• www.utell.com

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The Problem

• As the trends towards globalization of business
  continue, Utell needs to ensure that hotel rates
  and inventory rates are instantly accessible to
  the travel agents around the world.

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Project Goal

• Develop a system that will be capable of
  handling the complex matrix of data involved in
  marketing hotels in todays competitive
  environment
• The system must be truly multi-national

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Utilizing JAD

• Enlisted the help of IBM to aid in its JAD
  sessions.
• The session was an ongoing two year relationship
• Two teams worked together at one of IBMs main
  locations, to ensure the best fit for the system.

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Results

• The JAD session coupled with RAD technology
  brought forth a system that
• Delivered further availability and rate modules.
• Displayed and enhanced interface with the
  distribution network
• Provided other specialized systems to Utells
  business partners

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AJC International

• AJC International is one of the world's largest
  global distributors of frozen food
• Annually moving over 350,000 metric tons of food
  between 6 continents

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Project Goal

• Support traders and international distribution
• Streamline existing order-entry and inventory
  systems
• Replace the four existing legacy systems

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Utilizing JAD?

• CIO lead team
• Interviewed 75 of AJC International's 90-person
  staff, including its two owners
• After processing feedback, the CIO wrote a
  specification proposal that he felt reflected the
  needs of would-be users of the new database

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Results

• Traders who were supposed to benefit from the new
  access to timely information refused to use the
  new system the way it was intended
• Accustomed to having assistants enter data into
  AJC International's computer systems, traders
  would not use the new system. They insisted that
  their assistants continue to do the typing.

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CIO Speaks What went Wrong?

• When my company tried to use JAD for a new
  order-entry system, we needed a group of users to
  participate several hours a day in the JAD
  sessions. But the users (salespeople) we needed
  didn't want what we were developing, and the time
  they spent with us was time they weren't selling,
  which took money from them.

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• The business rules to be coded into the
  application were imprecise and were being
  addressed by affected managers as they had time
  to do so, not according to our development
  schedule.
• Even if we had had perfect cooperation, we were
  developing an application that we couldn't break
  up into manageable pieces according to the JAD
  methodology because order entry in this company
  is monolithic, with complex business rules
  governing each aspect of the process.

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What really went wrong?

• Lack of understanding on the part of management
  as to what JAD really is!
• Talking to users is not enough to succeed at JAD
• Non-existent feedback after initial interviews
• Complete lack of deliverables
• No prototypes developed

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Whats out there
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Sites of Interest

• www.utexas.edu/hr
• http//www.bcgrp.com/
• www.thehathaway.com
• www.piersonapp.com
• www.greggale.com

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Sources

• Articles www.computerworld.com- "Why JAD goes
  bad." ComputerWorld. April 25, 1994. By Rochelle
  Garner.- "JAD isn't bad." ComputerWorld. June
  113, 1994. By James Gillaspy.
• Jackson, Robert B. and Embley, David W. Using
  joint application design to develop readable
  formal specifications. Information And Software
  Technology. p. 615-631, 1996.
• Rubenstein, Ed. CA One Services looks to data
  warehouse to gain competitive advantage.
  Nations Restaurant News. p .30, November 03,
  1997.
• IBM Working On Global Reservations Technology.
  Newsbytes News Network. December 06, 1994.
• Davidson, E.J. Joint Application Design (JAD)
  in Practice. The Journal of Systems and
  Software. p. 215-223, 1999.
• http//sern.ucalgary.ca/paulson/SENG613/seng613-j
  ad.htm
• http//classes.seattleu.edu/software_engineering_g
  raduate/csse591/Mckee/tony.pdf