A Business Analyst's SME Interview Guide

Now, when you read this IA / UX technique learning article, I want you to keep the following from another post in the back of your mind at all times: When we gather reqs as BA or IS or UX Designer we Interview Users to get their inputs and feedback, while it helps to start from a set agenda or script of questions it is the stuff we as professionals think to ask as follow-on questions to drill into a particular thought or emotional response the Users brought up, U can’t write that down in advance and hand the list off to some one else to do the interview - you have to have the skills to pay the bills,

but if you take all this guidance quite literally you may find you have more questions than answers, so go and read Nicola Rushton's article on Medium about UX interviewing in specific and Chill-Lax & try to dial-it back & relax a little bit, but if you understand that the content & context will vary from project to project, then read on and be enlightened.

while the topics and content will always change from one project to the next, there is a journalistic discipline for BAs interview technique that takes a page form the BA training 'Body of Knowledge' aka BABOK that you may want to employ asking questions from a script and then following-on from questions made-up on the fly as they pertain to capturing qualitative impressions and converting those into quantitative metrics along the lines of a J.D. Powers & Assoc. rating system. One ssimple example of such a follow-on question is "That's interesting, but 'How did that make you feel' ? "

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Begin by going around the room with Introductions: as each person describes who they are and what they do...the Information Architect or Business Analyst should

List out Attendee / Interviewee Names, Job Responsibilities

Describe the People in terms of affinity groups, departments & team they being to

·      Who are the Users of this Site, Job Role, Business Division > Dept. > Sub Dept. and What are their job responsibilities, typically daily task assignments? are you customer support, claims processing, research assistant, content author, training presenter, content manager, delivery associate, process improvement analyst, etc.

•  In a few sentences what is one way you see the proposed changes to this environment having a positive outcome affecting your job & typical daily task assignments?
•  How do they access Knowledge Mgmt. Systems & Support Solutions content on a daily basis? Walk-me thru a couple of scenarios where the information your looking for is either easier or harder to find depending upon where its located.
• Can you demonstrate onscreen by logging in an stepping thru your dept.'s home page of the KM / CMS and how many clicks it takes to find that thing first by search or browse, whichever is more comfortable / familiar for you.
• If I could do one thing to fix those access issues, fundability and usability pain points, what would it be, what initial changes would have the most impact on streamlining and facilitating your daily work?
• What factors do you expect to make this project / re-design effort a success?, what will success look like and how will we measure it?
• Do you foresee that all groups and individuals will readily embrace the changes? Do you expect any resistance? By whom? Why?

Content - the Inventory should be going on in tandem as a separate effort to be submitted for your IA content analysis, but in the meantime...

Break down the as-is Content Creation, Publish, Upload, Search to Retrieve & Consume CONTENT LIFECYCLE Processes, especially putting emphasis on the Users who must access this content daily to do their jobs and any issues they may have in finding what they need that slows or impedes their progress to try and better understand "What Problem(s) are we trying to solve here?

What is the Content? Which content is critical for your work?

Is there an existing Topical content index? How is it arranged,

Can you describe any data noting hierarchy or menu structure like an A-Z Index,

Can you describe Global > Local Navigation choices or Menu pages you have to click thru like Content Category > Sub-Category > Topic > SubTopic that illustrates a structure you click-thru to drill-down to the page or answer that you need?

How do you acquire or create content?

How do you define unstructured content? Structured content?

At what point does unstructured content get codified, classified and defined?

• How do these Users Access that content on a daily basis?
• If Content Author - What processes do you follow to manage content?
• If Content Consumer - What processes do you follow to access content?
• Are these organic processes within your group or developed per Content Stewards' or Process Improvement Team's guidance?
• Are their short-cuts, maybe paper printout or cardboard cut out Table of Contents, Index,
• Does your team utilize Cheat-sheets or do you post notes up on your cube wall or near near the monitor to help you quickly access frequently used topics?
• Is there a process in place for authoring and publishing content? Please describe this lifecycle process from content creation to publication, including participants, workflows, publishing channels, and any other known steps (review, etc.).
• What metadata (required descriptive & administrative tags are assigned?
• Who is assigning metadata, at the time of content creation, editable later
• Are these metadata fields ever Re-used as search filters at the time of content retrieval.?
• What is your involvement in how content is organized?

Business Context

• What is your top pain point with regard to current state? (for example, website layout, navigation, content presentation or search)
• What do you see as the key problem(s) with existing information management practices?
• Do you have any ideas how they can be solved?
• Do you see any missed opportunities within your department due to the constraints of the existing practices?

Technology

• How do you manage the electronic content? On what platform?
• Does the method used to manage content change based on the content in question, the specific site or other factors?

Wrap Up

• Is there anything that makes you apprehensive about this project?
• Do you have anything else you would like to add (any additional comments)?

Great Optional End Question:

Are there any questions I should have asked but didn’t? (helps us reveal potential pain points / obstacles that we may have missed).