Scenarios as an analytics tool, and how they help work with requirements

“The director of a small brokerage firm, Yury, was sitting in the office, which he rented in fashionable coworking with his few employees. The company recently showed very good results. Prestigious economic education made it possible to build a successful company on their own, but Yuri did not know how to secure fixed capital - a customer base - from frequent hacker attacks. Yuri trusted his employees, but they often worked from home, from cafes, and the local administrator, Ilya, was not credible, probably because of his beard and black T-shirt.

Such thoughts have long been accompanied by Yuri and the new billboard, which was recently hung just opposite the windows of the office, and gave impetus to concrete steps. On the billboard, PrivateNet promised to protect important data and communications in the company.

Secretary Julia not only wore coffee to the boss, but also carried out the most important tasks. Therefore, the letter of Yuri about the need to purchase a solution of a certain PrivateNet was not surprising. Julia quickly found the company's website on the Internet and confidently chose a package for the company from 2 to 25 people and paid for it with a plastic card. Entered the addresses of all employees (yes, they are all on mail.ru, but the service seems to be reliable and corporate mail is obtained free of charge), telephones, the number of licenses for each address, and entered the accompanying text on its behalf so that the letter with the link does not fall into spam. Press the button "Notify employees" and it's done. Oh yeah, check that everything worked. Julia checked mail on her MacBook Air and on the iPhone. Everything was established without problems, and in the private office on the PrivateNet portal there was a green figure of 2. Well, as it will be 11, you can tell Yura that we are safe. ”

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What does this mini-story give analytics? Why does the analyst start writing such a text at all? After all, it was possible to get by with the usual list - which segment of the market the product is designed for, which problems the user decides, who decides to buy, who is the user of the product, what channel of distribution, which platforms are supported, the roles of the users of the product, who we trust, and who can be the violator and much more.

But, firstly, a coherent story is easily remembered, and secondly, it contains many implicit details. For example, developers are unlikely to expect that Julia, being essentially the administrator of the organization, will rule the configs. Or does someone think that Julia knows which OS is on the employees' devices? Seriously?

And from the script, we learn about the dubious type - Ilya, who has direct access to the network equipment, as well as about the presence of other users-potential violators in the same physical network of coworking. Do not forget that employees do not always work from the office. It seems that already enough data to start building a model of the offender.

Also, the script allows you to assess the integrity of the requirements - have you missed something important or, on the contrary, made too far-reaching assumptions. For example, in this example, it is immediately apparent that an important aspect of the product is not disclosed - what it actually does and how it solves the user's problem. And someone from the project team may question the absolute confidence in the corporate mail provider.

And that is not all. In the sales department, it will be clear to everyone what exactly they are selling, and how best to organize sales. What should I write on billboards, or billboards in general will not? And what will happen instead of them? What is the best way to push Yuri to a purchase decision? We make all the adjustments immediately in the script and check how everything develops into a continuous story.

In other words, scripts allow you to order chaos and serve as a tool for verifying the visibility of a product within a team. In addition, they are much more interesting to read than dry requirements. How do you do it?

The names of the companies and the names of people are fictitious, all coincidences are random.