Using the 5Ws Framework: When

Let’s take a look at how to use the “when” of the 5Ws framework to define problems and gather requirements for a digital transformation initiative.

When is your feature, product, or service available to stakeholders?

Is it during:

• Your working hours

• Their working hours

• Weekends

• Holidays

When do those usage periods occur and the relevant timezones?

Also, when people are executing your business process or interacting with your system, is the usage:

• Flat or consistent

• Peaked or unpredictable

To ensure you can continually add value, when is there available downtime for maintenance and new releases of systems?

Let’s switch gears to focus on process or system invocation.

When does the business process start?

• Responding to a person or system event

• Scheduled

• Ad hoc

When it is scheduled, is the frequency rigid (e.g. every 1st of the month) or on a rolling basis (e.g. an hour after the last run finished)?

Project timelines and lifecycles matter, too.

Within a project, when are these activities scheduled to take place?

• Discovery

• Design

• Development

• Testing

• Deployment

• Training & enablement

When changes are made to systems, is there any automated testing that occurs? Does that involve the system being changed, any systems that are integrated or connected to the changed system, or both?

When releases occur, is there smoke or full regression testing?

Finally, when are we anticipating this business process or system to be implemented, evolve, and retire?

Having an idea of useful life, ability to migrate early or at retirement, and defining program phasing is critical.

TLDR: Ask when questions to define availability, usage, project timeline, and overall lifecycle of your business process and technology platforms.