Using the 5Ws Framework
Roger Mitchell
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The same 5Ws that we learned in primary school is a helpful framework to use in digital transformation initiatives. When architecting business processes and systems, it is useful to learn about an environment and can make others question assumptions that have been made.
As a quick refresher, the 5Ws are:
Who
What
Where
When
Why
Even though it seems overly simplistic, there are a variety of ways that the 5Ws can be applied within an organization:
Defining problems
Gathering requirements
Designing solutions
Identifying opportunities
Gaining insights in a sales process
Developing go to market strategies
One of the strongest reasons to use the 5Ws is that it is universally understood by stakeholders across industries, demographics, and experience levels. It also is comprehensive in its scope, scales well for different sized features and projects, and is easily adopted.
This is the first post of a series that will focus on each of the Ws and dive into topics to consider when defining problems, gathering requirements, and designing solutions. This series will conclude with an example business case to consider and a set of questions to ask when presented with that case.
TLDR: 5Ws is easy to adopt and apply to practically any digital transformation initiative. Just ask who, what, where, when, and why.