Functional Design Phase

The Functional Design Phase is an iterative process that is broken down into five phases.

1. The first phase includes User Community group discussions. These discussions are conducted by members of the design team and include up to three user participants in each group.
2. The feedback gathered during the User Community group discussions will be used by the design team to form high level requirements for the front end application. These requirements will be discussed in Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions held in the second phase. In the JAD sessions, the design team will bring together User Communities to discuss the high level requirements. This will ensure that everyone understands what requirements have been identified, and allows feedback to be gathered regarding the requirements.
3. The feedback from the JAD sessions will be used in breakout sessions during phase three. The breakout sessions will include User Community groups, as well as business teams (teams from offices that are responsible for the transaction data – such as Human Resources, Payroll, Student Employment, Provost Office, etc.). The goal of these sessions is to develop the business rules, interface requirements, and validation rules which will be implemented in the front end application.
4. The fourth phase will consist of the construction of functional specifications including a paper model of how the application will function.
5. Once the functional specifications are set, the fifth phase will result in a clickable prototype of the application. Focus groups composed of User Community members and business teams will be asked to test the prototype, and provide feedback.